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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Theory
Democracy
Politics
Common
Freedom
Hard
Good
Politician
People
Deserve

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Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
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Every man is his own hell.
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A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
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He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
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When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
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A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks a woman loses hers after four kisses.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
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If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y
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No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
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...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.
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Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
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The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
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