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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn

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
Worth
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Economic
Freedom
Damn
Independence
Foundation

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Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
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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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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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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
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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.
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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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There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.
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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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It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.
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This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
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Life without sex might be safer but it would be unbearably dull
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Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels two-thirds, more or less, idiots and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
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The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.
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Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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