A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
Interpretation
Politicians thrive in democracies by creating threats and false solutions.
H. L. Mencken suggests that politicians often find success in democratic systems by fabricating dangers that do not truly exist, alongside the proposed solutions to confront these imagined crises. This highlights how manipulation and rhetoric can be used to gain power and influence, feeding on fear and anxiety within the populace.
In practice
During a campaign rally, a candidate could reference this quote to discuss their opponent's use of fear tactics.
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.
All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
We have to ensure politically that what's doable can indeed by translated into law, but what's not doable mustn't become European law. Otherwise, the auto industry will work somewhere with higher carbon emissions - and we can't want that.
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
One of the things the United States does well is building coalitions. What the U.S. knows is that if you don't have a coalition with you, you will have a coalition against you. I don't want to see China and Russia on the side of Iran more strongly than they are.
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