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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
Excursions
Regards
Cynicism
Adventure
Regard
American
Truth
Excursion
Mind
Peculiarity

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The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
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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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When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.
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There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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The worst government is the most moral.
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It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.
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The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance he offers absolution.
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Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
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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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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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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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If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
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To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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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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A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.
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