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

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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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The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.
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A poet over 30 is pathetic
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At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
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Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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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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The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.
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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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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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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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Conscience is the accumulated sediment of ancestral faint- heartedness
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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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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
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Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
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It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
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Lying is not only excusable it is not only innocent it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.
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I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
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