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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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The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to wit, that, it is neither virtuous nor necessary to suffer and to do without.
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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
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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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Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world
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Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
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Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
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The best years are the forties after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.
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Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
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Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.
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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop
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No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
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Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another Rosenkavailer.
H. L. Mencken
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Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
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There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.
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The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.
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