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There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

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
Underestimating
Underestimate
Intelligence
Public
American

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It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.
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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
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The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
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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.
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Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
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Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
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One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.
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The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
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The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
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Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
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Los Angeles: nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.
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Man weeps to think that he will die so soon woman, that she was born so long ago.
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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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[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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