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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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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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Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.
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Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
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Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.
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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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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 cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
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One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.
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People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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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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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance he offers absolution.
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Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
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It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth-and youth is the time of real tragedy-that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect.
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Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
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