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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.

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
Always
Degrade
Conquest
Disaster
Victory
Moral
History
Degrades
Human
Vanquished
Humans
Victor

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This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.
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People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
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A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks a woman loses hers after four kisses.
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He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.
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A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.
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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 matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
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