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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas

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
American
Educated
Ideas
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Politician
Necessary
Among
Longer
Thirteenth
Century
Profess
Belief
Politicians

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Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
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If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.
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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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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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The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
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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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The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
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Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.
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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
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Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
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To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.
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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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