Mencken #19 - Liberty Means Self-Reliance

Quite a poetic quote from Mencken today as he describes what liberty means to him. I feel like he is describing anarchy - taking responsibility for yourself, with no man or god to blame for your failures. The quote comes from his Notes on Democracy (1926) - a tome absolutely chock-full of such wisdom as this.

“Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means enterprise, it means the capacity for doing without. The free man is one who has won a small and precarious territory from the great mob of his inferiors, and is prepared and ready to defend it and make it support him. All around him are enemies, and where he stands there is no friend. He can hope for little help from other men of his own kind, for they have battles of their own to fight. He has made of himself a sort of god in his little world, and he must face the responsibilities of a god, and the dreadful loneliness."

Image credits
1.http://theamericanmercury.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/mencken-painting.jpg

2. http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1380493459l/17835058.jpg

I Fucking Love H.L Mencken