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It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

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
Causes
Rebellion
Literature
Rebel
Sound
Leaders
Doesn
Determined
Take
Majority
Make
Cause
Leader
Takes
Uprising

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Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
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Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
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Man weeps to think that he will die so soon woman, that she was born so long ago.
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I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
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To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches.
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This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse
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The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had one, at least since Washington, whose fundamental character was solider and more admirable.
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