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A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor

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
Politics
Rural
Actors
Horns
Political
Corn
Manner
Doctor
Mien
Doctors
Ham
Politician
Tin
Actor
Horn

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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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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.
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I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
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Never underestimate the bad taste of the American public
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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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No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.
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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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Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
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No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
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If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.
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If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
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Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.
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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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