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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

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
University
Worse
College
Might
Universities
Burn
Damage

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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
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The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
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There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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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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When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast.
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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.
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What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
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The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place
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So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free association with one who is.
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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