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Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.

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
Judging
Engagements
Fool
Jury
Groups
Lied
Health
Engagement
Business
Failed
People
Judge
Hearing
Group

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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
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The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes: a smal l minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them.
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To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.
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Skin diseases are something doctors like, the patient neither dies nor gets well.
H. L. Mencken
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It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.
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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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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
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One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
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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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Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world
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If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
H. L. Mencken
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I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
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The common man knows exactly what he wants...and deserves to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
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The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
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Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.
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It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
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Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.
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Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.
H. L. Mencken