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Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.

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
Quality
Unionism
Use
Safeguard
Part
Ensure
Power
Uses
Better
Seldom
Ever
Powers
Work
Large
Always
Almost
Devotes

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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.
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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.
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Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli.
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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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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 music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
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When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.
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Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
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Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.
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It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
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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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The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
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