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There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
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
Character
Even
Something
Valuable
Morality
Civilization
Liberty
Wisdom
Religion
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.
H. L. Mencken
Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
H. L. Mencken
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
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At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
H. L. Mencken
There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli.
H. L. Mencken
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
H. L. Mencken
Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
H. L. Mencken
Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
H. L. Mencken
Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.
H. L. Mencken
What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
H. L. Mencken
The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
H. L. Mencken
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
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For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.
H. L. Mencken
As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
H. L. Mencken
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.
H. L. Mencken
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
H. L. Mencken
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.
H. L. Mencken
When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.
H. L. Mencken
No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.
H. L. Mencken
