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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
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Henry Louis Mencken
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If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
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Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
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Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
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All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.
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It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
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It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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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 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.
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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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There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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There are two impossibilities in life: just one drink and an honest politician.
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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
H. L. Mencken
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The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.
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Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.
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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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Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
H. L. Mencken