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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.

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
Political
Privileges
Ends
Campaign
Never
Campaigns
Privilege
Program
Special
War
Next
Underprivileged

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There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
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It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
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I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.
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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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If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
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What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor
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No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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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.
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Confidence: The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place
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