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The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.

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
Every
Bitter
Agony
Men
Honesty
Toil
Roasting
Lonely
Ashes
Chunk
Brave
Represents
Seeker
Hell
Atoms
Chunks
Upon
Smallest
Dump
Truth
Grave
Atom
Soul
Graves
Seekers

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No democratic delusion is more fatuous than that which holds that all men are capable of reason, and hence susceptible to conversion by evidence. If religions depended upon evidence for their prolongation, then all of them would collapse.
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Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
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The average man gets his living by such depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him.
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The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
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We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had one, at least since Washington, whose fundamental character was solider and more admirable.
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New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
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Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
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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.
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Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
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I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.
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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
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The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.
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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
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The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
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Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
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It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.
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I believe that it should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the pruderies and prejudices of the general, so long as any honest minority, however small, wants to read them. The remedy of the majority is not prohibition, but avoidance.
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