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Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals

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
Even
Time
Morals
Field
Fields
Justice
Moral
Great

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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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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
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No democratic delusion is more fatuous than that which holds that all men are capable of reason, and hence susceptible to conversion by evidence. If religions depended upon evidence for their prolongation, then all of them would collapse.
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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 real man lies in the depths of subconscious.
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Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.
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If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
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The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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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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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs.
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A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor
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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
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Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for.
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Lying is not only excusable it is not only innocent it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.
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Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. [...] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.
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