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Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.

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
Freedom
Deter
Next
Scoundrel
Doe
Scoundrels
Wells
Disposed
Firsts
Hanging
Well
Appears
First
Democracy
Least

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The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.
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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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Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
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It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
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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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Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
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I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.
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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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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
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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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I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
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If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense.
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The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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