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Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.

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
Observation
Teach
Poor
Experience
Followed
Really
Teaches
Men
Seldom
Guide
Guides

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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
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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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Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh.
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Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
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I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
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In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
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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.
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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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The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
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The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
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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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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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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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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
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