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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

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
Simple
Freedom
Neat
Problem
Solution
Every
Ethics
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Wrong
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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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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Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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Nature abhors a moron.
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A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
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The real man lies in the depths of subconscious.
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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
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What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
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People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
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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 chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
H. L. Mencken
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A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
H. L. Mencken
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
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