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Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.

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
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Work
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Laying
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
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The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
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The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
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If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
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The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.
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In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.
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Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
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If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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It is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function. He may be an ass, but that is surely no demerit in a man paid to make asses of his customers.
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Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
H. L. Mencken
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Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.
H. L. Mencken
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War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
H. L. Mencken
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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.
H. L. Mencken
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I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
H. L. Mencken