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Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.

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
Actually
Exposed
Times
Error
Art
Arts
Truth
Discovered
Life
Errors
Nine
Ten
Literature

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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.
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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
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Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
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The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.
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A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.
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The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
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Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.
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Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
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New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
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For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.
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Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
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Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
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Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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