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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.

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
Truth
Delusion
Always
Presence
Like
Fronts
Front
Humor
Justice
Messianic
Passion
Withers
Sense
Patriotic

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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
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The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all men are just as easy to fool.
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A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.
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Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.
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The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
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Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
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Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals
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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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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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Every man is his own hell.
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Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.
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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
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When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don't want them to be falling ill of smallpox
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