"The practical politician, as every connoisseur of ochlocracy knows, is not a man who seeks to inoculate the innumerable caravan of voters with new ideas; he is a man who seeks to search out and prick into energy the basic ideas that are already in them, and to turn the resultant effervescence of emotion to his own uses."

—H.L. Mencken, from his 97-page preface to The American Credo: A Contribution toward the Interpretation of the National Mind [1920] by George Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken, pp.8-9

(Back to Senator Robert Smith)