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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.

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
Thirds
Congress
Less
Three
Scoundrels
Two
Idiots
Consists
Idiot
Third

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The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
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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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Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.
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Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
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The common man knows exactly what he wants...and deserves to get it good and hard.
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There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
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Why do men go to zoos?
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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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Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
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It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
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How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
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One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.
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What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
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In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
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