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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.

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
Probably
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Every
Teaches
Something
Wit
Men
Fail
Failure
Failing
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The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.
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Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
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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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The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
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No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
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To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
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Every man is his own hell.
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It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.
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The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
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One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place
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Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.
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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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Christian endeavor is notoriously hard on female pulchritude.
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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
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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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A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor
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