204
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Context: The main thing that every political campaign in the United States demonstrates is that the politicians of all parties, despite their superficial enmities, are really members of one great brotherhood. Their principal, and indeed their sole, object is to collar public office, with all the privileges and profits that go therewith. They achieve this collaring by buying votes with other people's money. No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. VIII "The Hidden City"
“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
“I am…wholeheartedly a Galbraith man.”
Anthony Crosland, The Conservative Enemy (Jonathan Cape, 1962), p. 103.
Source: The Kingdom of Gods (2011), Chapter 23 (p. 563)
that's my slogan.
Huey Long (T. Harry Williams, Huey Long, p. 706)
As quoted in LIFE magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (5 August 1946), p. 48 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3UwEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&client=safari&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false
1940s–present
“You politicians remain professional because the voters remain amateur.”
“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”
As quoted in The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1984) by Robert Byrne
1980s
Variant: Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
Statement of 1864, quoted in Pamphlets on the Deaf, Dumb & Blind
