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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.
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
Everything
Permanent
Safety
Men
Courage
Inexplicable
Emotion
Inferior
Wants
Inferiors
Worry
Unknown
Fear
Complexes
Else
Complex
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A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.
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Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
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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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Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.
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The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
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There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
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War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
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It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
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The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
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A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.
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Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
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Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
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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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