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Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.

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
Make
Practical
Psychology
Command
Promise
Follow
Safer
America
Grounded
Government
Promises
Whole
Practicals

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Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
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I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
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All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.
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Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
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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 most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
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[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.
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