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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
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Henry Louis Mencken
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More quotes by H. L. Mencken

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In the United States...politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for King Lear, or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.
H. L. Mencken
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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.]
H. L. Mencken
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
H. L. Mencken
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The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast.
H. L. Mencken
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
H. L. Mencken
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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
H. L. Mencken
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I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
H. L. Mencken
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The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes: a smal l minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them.
H. L. Mencken
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Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.
H. L. Mencken
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Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
H. L. Mencken
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In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
H. L. Mencken
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Los Angeles: nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.
H. L. Mencken
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
H. L. Mencken
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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
H. L. Mencken
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[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.
H. L. Mencken
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In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.
H. L. Mencken
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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
H. L. Mencken
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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
H. L. Mencken
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No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.
H. L. Mencken
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There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli.
H. L. Mencken