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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

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
Crime
Grounded
Poverty
Sole
Theory
Prevent
Almost
Aim
Upon
Punishment
Idea
Obviously
Ideas
Prison
Dubious
Notion
Prevented

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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
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For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.
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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
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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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There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
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Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
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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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It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.
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No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
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Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
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Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
H. L. Mencken