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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

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
Politics
Consists
Getting
Holding
Business
Exactly
Political
Office
Another
Taking
Government
Talent
Men
Liberty
Auctions
Like
Special
Gang

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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
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The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.
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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
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People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
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A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.
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If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.
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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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Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
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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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The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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