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When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.

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
Hear
Live
Enough
Hissed
Feel
Pang
Feels
Applauded
Long
Pity
Always
Humility
Men
Fame

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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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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 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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The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?
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The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
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This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
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No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.
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There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.
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The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.
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No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
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If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
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All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.
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