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Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
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Historian
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Literary Critic
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Baltimore
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Henry Louis Mencken
Theology
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It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
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In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
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One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]
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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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Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man.
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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
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When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
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The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.
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Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
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When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.
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