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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.

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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Religion
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Atheism
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Conventions

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No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
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There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
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A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.
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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
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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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It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs.
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I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding.
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I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all resolute and honest dealing with what, after all, must be every healthy literature's elementary materials.
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
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