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Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.

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
Make
Rage
Always
Weakness
Men
Atheism
Life
Virtue
Fear
Death
Piety
Become
Weaknesses
Trying
Virtues

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Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
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No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
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The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small.
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The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.
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Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
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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.
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I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
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At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
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I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
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Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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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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No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
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The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
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