The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry: It is a mellifluous and emotional statement of the obviously not true. The men who fought for self-determination at Gettysburg were not the Federals but the Confederates.
H. L. MenckenIn human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
H. L. MenckenUnionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.
H. L. MenckenDemocracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.
H. L. MenckenThe plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.
H. L. Mencken