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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
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
Natural
Tendency
Government
Tendencies
Every
Worse
Grow
Liberty
Grows
Satisfactory
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Steadily
Less
Constitute
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
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The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.
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Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
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When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don't want them to be falling ill of smallpox
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
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No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
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I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
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Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
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A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
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It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
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No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
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