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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.

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
Resolve
Never
Civilized
Men
Careful
Time
Promise
Swears
Simply
Resolves
Bits
Oath
Christian
Bloody
Next
Swear

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The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
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The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.
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Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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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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School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
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What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
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When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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