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The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

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
Democracy
Trouble
Freedom
Christian
Communists
Communist
Communism
Christians
Christianity

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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
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The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.
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The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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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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Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
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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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Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
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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.
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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
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Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.
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Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.
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The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
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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 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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A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
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