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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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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
Make
Full
Foolish
Effort
Fellows
Franchise
Belief
Deny
Malicious
Wrong
Convinced
Differentiate
Free
Profound
Includes
Nothing
Speech
Tempted
Right
Unless
Seldom
Even
Worth
Fellow

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The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.
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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.
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Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
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The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
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Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
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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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There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
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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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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
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A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
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The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.
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During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.
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The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance he offers absolution.
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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
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