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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.

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
Wells
Reputation
Human
Possession
Valuable
Humans
Air
Well
Success
Disdainful
Life
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Possessions
Next
Superior
Money
Superiors

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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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Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.
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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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Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
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Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.
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A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.
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All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.
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When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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A living language is like a man suffering incessantly from small hemorrhages, and what it needs above all else is constant transactions of new blood from other tongues. The day the gates go up, that day it begins to die.
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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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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
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