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The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.

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
Democratic
Despotic
Step
Goose
Steps
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Democracy
Folk
Common
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Men
Delight
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Folks
Gait

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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
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The best years are the forties after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.
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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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