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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
H. L. Mencken
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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
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Baltimore
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Henry Louis Mencken
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More quotes by H. L. Mencken
Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.
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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.
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Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop
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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
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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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Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place
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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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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
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Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
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Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels two-thirds, more or less, idiots and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
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The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
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Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
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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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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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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
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