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H L Mencken Inspirational Quotes (501)

Page 4 of 21
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Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.
H. L. Mencken
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The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
H. L. Mencken
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
H. L. Mencken
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The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance he offers absolution.
H. L. Mencken
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Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.
H. L. Mencken
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
H. L. Mencken
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The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.
H. L. Mencken
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How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
H. L. Mencken
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
H. L. Mencken
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Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
H. L. Mencken
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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
H. L. Mencken
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
H. L. Mencken
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A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor
H. L. Mencken
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
H. L. Mencken
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One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.
H. L. Mencken
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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
H. L. Mencken
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
H. L. Mencken
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It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs.
H. L. Mencken
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The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.
H. L. Mencken
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. Mencken
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The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
H. L. Mencken
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Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
H. L. Mencken
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Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
H. L. Mencken
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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
H. L. Mencken
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