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I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

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
Likes
Sports
Common
Hate
Sense
Persons
Person
Hates

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.
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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
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[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
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Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
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To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
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Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world
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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.
H. L. Mencken
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There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
H. L. Mencken
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
H. L. Mencken
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Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives.
H. L. Mencken
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Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.
H. L. Mencken
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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
H. L. Mencken
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There are two impossibilities in life: just one drink and an honest politician.
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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.
H. L. Mencken