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The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.

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
Favors
Two
Main
Ideas
Criticism
Writing
Liberty
Polemic
Whether
Polemics
Hate
Fraud
Strong
Literary
Running
Favor

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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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There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
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The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.
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One horse-laugh is worth ten-thousand syllogisms.
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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 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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There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.
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There are two impossibilities in life: just one drink and an honest politician.
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Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
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The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man.
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Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
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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 common man knows exactly what he wants...and deserves to get it good and hard.
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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
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People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
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The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.
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The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
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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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Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
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