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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.

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
Ship
Steel
Ships
Politics
American
History
Sailed
Political
Granite
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Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
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The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.
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Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
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I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
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It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
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The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all.
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In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
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What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor
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Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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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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Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
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It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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