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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

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
Values
Privileges
Men
Libertarianism
World
Libertarian
Privilege
Leadership
Value
Liberty
Rights

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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
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He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
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The first kiss is stolen by the man the last is begged by the woman.
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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.
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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
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It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
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What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor
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A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
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No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.
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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
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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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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
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The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.
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The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
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