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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.

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
Become
Borne
Without
Hence
Would
Innocent
Life
Mere
Offers
Syllogism
Necessary
Excusable
Lying
Metallic
Success
Unavoidable

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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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No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.
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Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
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Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.
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Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
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[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
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Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
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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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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
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Osteopath--One who argues that all human ills are caused by the pressure of hard bone upon soft tissue. The proof of his theory isto be found in the heads of those who believe it.
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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 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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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.
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A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
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I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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