“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
“What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For 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.”
Prejudices, Fourth Series (1924)
1920s
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H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes
MUNICH, February 10, 2007. http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/02/a50c8a12-b6a8-44ad-92dd-58183e78a032.html
2006- 2010
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics
“I believe that almost all politicians are honest.”
This I Believe (1952)
Context: I believe that almost all politicians are honest. For every bribed alderman there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies.
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics
“It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.”
"On Court-Influence" (January 3/January 10, 1818)
Political Essays (1819)
[ZİFLİOĞLU, VERCİHAN, Let’s cut out the middlemen, to-be patriarch says, Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review, 2010-02-18, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=let8217s-cut-out-the-middlemen-to-be-patriarch-says-2010-02-18, 2010-02-20, English]
On Armenia-Turkey relations
Tony Lopez, "The natural successor to President Arroyo?", BizNews Asia, 11-18 June 2007, p. 25, ISSN 1655-7263.
2007
“It's those who lie outside ordinary experience who have the most to teach us.”
Malcolm Gladwell (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. p. 198