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Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.

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
Garbage
Deserves
Atheist
Deserve
Respect
Religion
Pile

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Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
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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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Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
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A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
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No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
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No one hates his job so heartily as a farmer.
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The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
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When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
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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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There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli.
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Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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There are two kinds of music German music and bad music.
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The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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