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Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.

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
Even
Meaning
Controversy
Seem
Unable
Almost
Sentence
Understand
Sets
Plainest
Write
Newspapers
Editorial
Seems
Sentences
Editorials
Anything
Whenever
Distorted
Writing
Writers
Instantly

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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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There are two impossibilities in life: just one drink and an honest politician.
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Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
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The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain disdain he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
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School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.
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The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
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The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls.
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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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Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
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Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.
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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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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
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The best years are the forties after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.
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All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.
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History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.
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