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

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The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.
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I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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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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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
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The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime he is a good citizen driven to despair.
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A great literature is thus chiefly the product of doubting and inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation.
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Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
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It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the great majority of men still believe that the universe is run by a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft and girth, who is nevertheless interested in the minutest details of the private conduct of even the meanest man.
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Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.
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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.
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There are no ugly cigars, only ugly smokers.
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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
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