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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.

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
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Lizard
Public
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Men
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Vegan
Tail
Watching
Lions
Cages
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Vegetarian
Flies
Gnaw

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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
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No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
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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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Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
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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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Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.
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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
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War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
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There are no ugly cigars, only ugly smokers.
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Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.
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He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
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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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A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
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Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.
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It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs.
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