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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
Support
Steadily
Less
Constitute
Natural
Tendency
Government
Tendencies
Every
Worse
Grow
Liberty
Grows
Satisfactory

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Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
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The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.
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It is only doubt that creates.
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It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.
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Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
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The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.
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A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
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He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
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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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The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.
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The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.
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There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
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Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
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Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
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