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The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

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
Limits
Cynic
Worst
Tolerant
Literature
Fanatics
Moral
Composed
Often
Usa
Government
Humane
Limit
Oppression
Cynics

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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for.
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Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
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The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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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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There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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