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.
Interpretation
This quote critiques government's tendency to limit individual freedom to sustain its own power.
H. L. Mencken argues that governments inherently act to suppress individual liberties to protect their own existence. He suggests that all forms of government, regardless of their claims to promote freedom, ultimately conspire against the individual by imposing restrictions that ensure their continued authority and control.
In practice
In a political debate about individual rights and government control, this quote can be used to illustrate concerns over government overreach.
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.
You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination.
I think the United States is sick. It suffers from the sickness, the disease of being the victor and it needs to cure itself from this disease.
Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
This paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.
Heaven cannot but be high. Earth cannot but be broad. The sun and moon cannot but revolve. All creation cannot but flourish. To do so is their TAO. But it is not from extensive study that this may be known, nor by dialectical skill that his may be made clear. The true sage will have none of these.
I wanted to write a commentary on the Bible, to write about the Talmud, about celebration, about the great eternal subjects: love and happiness.
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