Quote

If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.

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
Superiors
Beethoven
Image
Bodily
Average
Perish
Made
Eager
Men
Frame
Superiority
Jealous
Plainly
Superior
Aristotle

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Never underestimate the bad taste of the American public
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What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.
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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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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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It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty.
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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
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Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.
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Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
H. L. Mencken
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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.
H. L. Mencken
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
H. L. Mencken
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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. Mencken
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Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
H. L. Mencken
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My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.
H. L. Mencken
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Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.
H. L. Mencken
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Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
H. L. Mencken
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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.
H. L. Mencken
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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
H. L. Mencken