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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
Third
Thirds
Congress
Less
Three
Scoundrels
Two
Idiots
Consists
Idiot

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Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
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A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
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Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
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Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
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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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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
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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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The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a given subject sufficiently well to teach it is usually unwilling to do so.
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There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.
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A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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Christian endeavor is notoriously hard on female pulchritude.
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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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