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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
Autobiographer
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Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
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The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.
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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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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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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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Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.
H. L. Mencken
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The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
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I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all.
H. L. Mencken
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. Mencken
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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
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Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
H. L. Mencken
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Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.
H. L. Mencken
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It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
H. L. Mencken
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Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.
H. L. Mencken
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
H. L. Mencken
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Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
H. L. Mencken
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Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
H. L. Mencken
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The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world.
H. L. Mencken
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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
H. L. Mencken
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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
H. L. Mencken
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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.
H. L. Mencken