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The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.

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
Precisely
Equality
Imagine
Betters
Freedom
Oppress
Kind
Annoy
Mainly
Annoying

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War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
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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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During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.
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The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
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Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels two-thirds, more or less, idiots and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
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It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
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What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.
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Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.
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Why do men go to zoos?
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If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
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If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.
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To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches.
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.
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Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.
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The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.
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