If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
Interpretation
This quote critiques politicians who exploit and deceive their constituents for personal gain.
H. L. Mencken's quote suggests that a politician will go to any extent to please the desires of their constituents, even if it means promising morally questionable actions. It highlights the idea that some political leaders prioritize their survival and advancement over ethical considerations, serving whatever appetites their supporters may have, sometimes at the expense of fundamental morality.
In practice
During a political debate, a candidate quoted Mencken to highlight the insincerity often found in political promises.
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.
However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
I've often thought that the gauntlet of American politics is more individualistic, more expensive, more unpredictable than in many other democracies.
I never stood for any president in my life, never voted, before Barack Obama. It changed my life to vote. It starts there with me. I never cared for politics before Barack Obama. I never thought it mattered to people like me.
If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things in life the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.
I get asked a lot about getting into politics. I say, 'Take a look at politics. You tell me what seems appealing about that.'
The Irish Republic must be made a word to conjure with - a rallying point for the disaffected, a haven for the oppressed, a point of departure for the socialist, enthusiastic in the cause of human freedom.
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