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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

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
Spirituality
Preaches
Men
Doctrines
Idiots
Untrue
Preaching
Cynical
Idiot
Demagogue
Doctrine
Demagoguery

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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
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There are two kinds of music German music and bad music.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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Nature abhors a moron.
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A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse
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The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.
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For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.
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Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
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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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A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
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Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
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To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.
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When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
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Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.
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