The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
Interpretation
Governments tend to benefit those in power while becoming less effective for the general populace.
H. L. Mencken highlights the inherent flaw in government systems, suggesting that as governments evolve, they often prioritize the interests of their own members over the needs of the people they originally aimed to serve. This commentary reflects a cynical view of political growth and the tendency for authority to become self-serving and disconnected from its constituents.
In practice
In a debate about government accountability, this quote emphasizes the need for vigilance against political corruption.
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.
There is no reality except the one contained within us.
I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed, and that did not represent the attempt to prevent or undo this βloss of faceββno matter how severe the punishment, even if it includes death.
What you resist persists. And only what you look at, and own, can disappear. You make it disappear by simply changing your mind about it.
Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often for virtue.
Little islands are all large prisons: one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.
Individual potential of life is cosmic potential. Individual is divine deep inside. Transcendental experience awakens that divinity in man. And when you kill a man you deprive him of that birthright of it.
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