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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

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
Stolen
Advance
Goods
Election
Liberty
Sort
Auction
Politics
Auctions
Every
Sale

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Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
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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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It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
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I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
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There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.
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Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another Rosenkavailer.
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Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop
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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
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Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
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War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
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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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The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.
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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.
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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
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There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
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