If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that good politicians are as rare as honest burglars within a democratic system.
H. L. Mencken satirically comments on the nature of politics and the moral compromises often required in a democratic society. By comparing honest politicians to honest burglars, he implies that integrity is so seldom found in politics that it seems almost impossible, emphasizing the corruption and ethical failings that can arise in the pursuit of power and success within such a system.
In practice
In a discussion about the political climate, one could use this quote to illustrate the common skepticism towards politicians.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.
The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves.
Mr. President, youβre entitled as a president to your own airplane, and to your own house, but not to your own facts.
Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.
The Sudanese government has been playing games with the world, with the Africa Union, in particular, have been playing for time in order to conclude its mission of ethnic cleansing in the Sudan.
When Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster the terrorists' propaganda.
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