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The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
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
Folly
Mankind
Palpably
Belief
Follies
Religion
Costly
True
Passionately
Believe
Chief
Chiefs
Occupation
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
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Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
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The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.
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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.
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Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull
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The more noisy Negro leaders, by depicting all whites as natural and implacable enemies to their race, have done it a great disservice. Large numbers of whites who were formerly very friendly to it, and willing to go to great lengths to help it, are now resentful and suspicious.
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Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
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The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
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In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
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There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
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School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free association with one who is.
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A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.
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The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
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The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
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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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