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There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
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
Black
Flags
Comes
Throat
Every
Rage
Hoist
Men
Atheism
Throats
Time
Cutting
Palms
Life
Start
Spit
Desire
Flag
Fear
Consumed
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Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
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[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.
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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit natureā¦ the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance he offers absolution.
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Never underestimate the bad taste of the American public
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So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free association with one who is.
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Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.
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