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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
Spend
Vegetarian
Flies
Gnaw
Sort
Precisely
Lion
Lizard
Public
Catch
Tails
Fostered
Another
Likes
Monkeys
Lizards
Men
Mental
Expense
Cage
Time
Weakness
Vegan
Tail
Watching
Lions
Cages
Whose
Expenses
Chase
Combated

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In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
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The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.
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It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
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The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime he is a good citizen driven to despair.
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There are two impossibilities in life: just one drink and an honest politician.
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When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
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Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
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History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.
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Every man is his own hell.
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Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
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The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world.
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New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
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The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.
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