It seems to be difficult if not impossible for human beings to avoid thinking of government as mystical entity with a nature and a history all its own. It constitutes for them a creature somehow interposed between themselves and the great flow of cosmic events, and they look to it to think for them and to protect them. In democratic countries it is theoretically their agent, but there seems to be a strong tendency to convert the presumably free citizen into its agent, or at all events, its client. This exalted view of its scope, character, powers and autonomy is fundamentally false. A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men…. Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general, have come to a degree of puissance in the world that is unchallenged by that of any other group. Their fiats, however preposterous, are generally obeyed as a matter of duty, they are assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom, and the lives of multitudes are willingly sacrificed in their interest. . H.l. Mencken
About This Quote

The American Declaration of Independence and the French National Assembly held that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The U.S. Declaration proclaimed, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” This sentiment is echoed in the French National Assembly, which declared that “The French people have the right to choose their representatives and to determine their own destiny…” Most people do not think of government as a mystical entity with a nature and a history all its own. They think of it as a creature somehow interposed between themselves and the great flow of cosmic events, and they look to it to think for them and to protect them.

In democratic countries it is theoretically their agent, but there seems to be a strong tendency to convert the presumably free citizen into its agent, or at all events, its client. This exalted view of its scope, character, powers and autonomy is fundamentally false. A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men….

Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general, have come to a degree of puissance in the world that is unchallenged by that of any other group. Their fiats, however preposterous, are generally obeyed as a matter of duty, they are assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom, and the lives of multitudes are willingly sacrificed in their interest.

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More Quotes By H.l. Mencken
  1. Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
  2. Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
  3. You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
  4. The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
  5. An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.
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