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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.

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
Books
Book
Men
Whisky
Whiskey
Drunk
Constantly

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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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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 saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]
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The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
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There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.
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We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
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When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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