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Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for.

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
Account
Accounts
Religion
Nothing
Framed
Hypothesis

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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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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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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
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To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
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Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.
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But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.
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The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.
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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
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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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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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The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.
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There are two impossibilities in life: just one drink and an honest politician.
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A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.
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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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It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
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