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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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
Prodigies
Enables
Torture
Duty
Achieve
Sense
Also
Men
Tortures
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.
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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
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Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
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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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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
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Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
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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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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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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
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Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.
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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
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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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There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
H. L. Mencken
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.
H. L. Mencken