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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
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
Insignificant
Worthless
Journalism
Enormous
Paltry
Achievement
Pretensions
American
Predominantly
Country
Pretension
Like
Achievements
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
Skin diseases are something doctors like, the patient neither dies nor gets well.
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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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Every man is his own hell.
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A poet over 30 is pathetic
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It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function. He may be an ass, but that is surely no demerit in a man paid to make asses of his customers.
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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
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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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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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To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.
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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
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