Quotes to ponder about

• Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
  
• An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
  
• Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
  
• Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
  
• The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
  
• The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken.