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Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.

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
Political
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Burglar
Burglars
Ethical
Politician
Honest
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.
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Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
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Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world
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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
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There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
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A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
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If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other one.
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Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
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Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.
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Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
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Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.
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Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
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It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.
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