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The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.

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
Writing
Read
Plain
Even
Understand
Appetite
Made
Speak
Runs
Way
Write
Heads
Always
Running
Assumption
People
Able
Folly
Ideas
Cases
Many
Mistake
Assumed

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A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.
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At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
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If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.
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Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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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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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty.
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The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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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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It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.
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A poet over 30 is pathetic
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Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another Rosenkavailer.
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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
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The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.
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He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
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