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If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y

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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
States
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Democracy
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Less
Imbecility
United
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At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
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Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
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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 [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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The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
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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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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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[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
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Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
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A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.
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It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
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Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
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Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for.
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Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.
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Debussy--A pretty girl with one blue eye and one brown one.
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Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
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