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

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Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull
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When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.
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Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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The real man lies in the depths of subconscious.
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Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
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To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.
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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
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Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
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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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The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime he is a good citizen driven to despair.
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Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
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The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.
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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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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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