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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

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
Dull
Certainty
Sure
Faith
Always
Men

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A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.
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Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
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Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals
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To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches.
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Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
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The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.
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I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all.
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The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small.
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A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.
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There are two kinds of music German music and bad music.
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It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
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I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.
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Taxation, for example, is eternally lively it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories
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I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
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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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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
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