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I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

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
Become
Bounds
Yields
Believe
Measure
Tyrant
Men
Slave
Slight
However
Tyrants
Liberty
Yield
Takes
Bound
Freedom
Tyranny
Another
Keeping

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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.
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A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
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It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
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Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
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What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
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A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
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For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
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The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
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