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There are two kinds of music German music and bad music.

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
German
Humorous
Kinds
Funny
Two
Music
Kind

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
H. L. Mencken
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Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
H. L. Mencken
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New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
H. L. Mencken
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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.
H. L. Mencken
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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.
H. L. Mencken
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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
H. L. Mencken
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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
H. L. Mencken
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There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.
H. L. Mencken
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A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks a woman loses hers after four kisses.
H. L. Mencken
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What is the professor's function? To pass on to numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and largely untrue.
H. L. Mencken
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
H. L. Mencken
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It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
H. L. Mencken
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In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
H. L. Mencken
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The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
H. L. Mencken
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
H. L. Mencken
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The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.
H. L. Mencken
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Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality.
H. L. Mencken
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But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.
H. L. Mencken
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If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H. L. Mencken
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If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y
H. L. Mencken