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I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

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
Writing
Function
Feeling
Enjoys
Literature
Relieved
Enjoy
Attain
Write
Cows
Feelings
Milk
Order
Achieved
Giving
Tension

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A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
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Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
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The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
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The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.
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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
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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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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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The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
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The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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A poet over 30 is pathetic
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Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
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The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.
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I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.
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Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels two-thirds, more or less, idiots and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
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