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It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.

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
Adventure
Regard
American
Truth
Excursion
Mind
Peculiarity
Excursions
Regards
Cynicism

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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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The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all men are just as easy to fool.
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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 best years are the forties after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.
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There are two kinds of music German music and bad music.
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When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.
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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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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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Nature abhors a moron.
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Man weeps to think that he will die so soon woman, that she was born so long ago.
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Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
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The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
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There are no ugly cigars, only ugly smokers.
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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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Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
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No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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