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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
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
Overestimate
Decency
Dignity
Literature
Race
Human
Humans
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
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The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
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The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
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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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Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.
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If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.
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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 older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.
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All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
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Justice is what you get when you run out of money.
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
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The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
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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.
H. L. Mencken
