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During many a single week, I daresay, more money is spent in New York upon useless and evil things than would suffice to run the kingdom of Denmark for a year.

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
Money
Spent
Many
York
Years
Single
Things
Week
Suffice
Would
Year
Denmark
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Kingdom
Evil
Kingdoms
Running
Useless

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Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
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Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.
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Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.
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Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
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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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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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A poet over 30 is pathetic
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Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
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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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Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another Rosenkavailer.
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A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
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[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
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Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
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Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
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