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.
The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.
The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption - a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible.
Fascist movements kill off their critics, literally or metaphorically, while democratic movements value, invite and even welcome criticism.
When will Labour learn that you cannot build Jerusalem in Brussels.
Let me let you in on a little secret. There is no such thing as an international community. There are self-maximizing, self-interested states that will push their interests as far as possible.
Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.