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A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
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
Imaginary
Proportion
Invention
Prospers
Defense
Excels
Politician
Perils
Democracy
Defenses
Liberty
Peril
War
Normally
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If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
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Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
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Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.
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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality.
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To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. [...] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.
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What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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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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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
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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.
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