"Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to..." - Quote by H L Mencken
Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
More by H L Mencken
“The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.”
“What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that two stickout above all others. One is his curious and apparently incurable incompetence--his congenital inability to do any difficult thing easily and well, whether it be isolating a bacillus or writing a sonata. The other is his astounding susceptibility to fears and alarms--in short, his hereditary cowardice.... There is no record in history of any Anglo-Saxon nation entering upon any great war without allies.”
“Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.”
More on Government
“From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?”
“Withholding of payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government.”
“We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists--believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.”
More on Power
“He who is able to conquer others is powerful; he who is able to conquer himself is more powerful.”
“Well used are those cruelties (if it is permitted to speak well of evil) that are carried out in a single stroke, done out of necessity to protect oneself, and are not continued but are instead converted into the greatest possible benefits for the subjects. Badly used are those cruelties which. although being few at the outset, grow with the passing time instead of disappearing. Those who follow the first method can remedy their condition with God and with men; the others cannot possibly survive.”
“If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”