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Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.

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
Whose
Depends
Jobs
Never
Men
Argue
Arguing
Convinced

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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
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Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
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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 demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
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There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
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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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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
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Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.
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It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
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There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli.
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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
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