"The theory behind representative government is that..." - Quote by H L Mencken

“Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.”

“Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.”

“There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.”

“Should my administration prove to be a very wicked one...or a very foolish one, if you, the people, are true to yourselves and the Constitution, there is little harm I can do, thank God.”

“The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle...”

“History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.”

“In a democracy only will the freeman of nature design to dwell.”

“It [concentration of wealth and power] has been a menace to . . . American democracy.”

“Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.”