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H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.

Ben Hecht

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Ben Hecht
Age: 71 †
Born: 1893
Born: February 28
Died: 1964
Died: April 18
Film Director
Film Producer
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Religion
Notice
Credited
Christian
Aim
Orators
War
According
Overthrow
Art
Entertainment
Aims
Also
Conflict
Observers
Trying
Poet
Wipe
Democracy
Handful
Luncheon
American
Poets
Ymca

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Love is a hole in the heart.
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I have known a number of Don Juans who were good studs and who cavorted between the sheets without a psychiatrist to guide them. But most of the busy love-makers I knew were looking for masculinity rather than practicing it. They were fellows of dubious lust.
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Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
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The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
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They're a symbol of the whole town, pretending to fight, love, weep and laugh all the time - and they're phonies, all of them. And I head the list...their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness.
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Socially, a journalist ranks somewhere between the madam of a whorehouse and a bartender. but spiritually he ranks with Galileo, for he knows the world is round.
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Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
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In the court of the movie Owner, none criticized, none doubted. And none dared speak of art. In the Owner's mind art was a synonym for bankruptcy. The movie Owners are the only troupe in the history of entertainment that has never been seduced by the adventure of the entertainment world.
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He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
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Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him. The producer, director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it's a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it's a flop.
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The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them - as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
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Three years ago, the white hope of the theatre. Today, a mug. That's New York for you. Puts you on a Christmas tree, and then - the alley.
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The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite you can't have both.
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People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
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That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
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I see a lot of fog and a few lights. I like it when life's hidden. It gives you a chance to imagine nice things, nicer than they are.
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In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
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Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
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There's one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die - their silence.
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A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him.
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