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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
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
Made
Manner
Discussion
Rational
Laws
Longer
Public
Blackmail
Law
Executed
Process
Intimidation
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
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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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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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
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A poet over 30 is pathetic
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New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.
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In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
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But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man.
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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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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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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
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What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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