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H L Mencken Inspirational Quotes (501)

Page 5 of 21
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There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
H. L. Mencken
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The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?
H. L. Mencken
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
H. L. Mencken
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Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.
H. L. Mencken
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
H. L. Mencken
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Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
H. L. Mencken
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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
H. L. Mencken
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If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.
H. L. Mencken
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There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
H. L. Mencken
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I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
H. L. Mencken
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There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]
H. L. Mencken
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Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
H. L. Mencken
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If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
H. L. Mencken
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Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
H. L. Mencken
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If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
H. L. Mencken
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Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.
H. L. Mencken
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To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.
H. L. Mencken
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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
H. L. Mencken
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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
H. L. Mencken
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
H. L. Mencken
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The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.
H. L. Mencken
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Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
H. L. Mencken
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
H. L. Mencken
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The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.
H. L. Mencken
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