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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
Autobiographer
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Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
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Theology
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Unknowable
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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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The late William Jennings Bryan, L.L.D., always had one great advantage in controversy he was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent's case.
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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
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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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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other one.
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Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.
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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
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No democratic delusion is more fatuous than that which holds that all men are capable of reason, and hence susceptible to conversion by evidence. If religions depended upon evidence for their prolongation, then all of them would collapse.
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I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding.
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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit natureā¦ the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
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A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
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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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Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
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I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.
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When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
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I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
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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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Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
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