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The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.

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
Expert
Priests
Experts
Nonsense
Logicians
Logic
Pedant
Worse
Pedants
Always
Diligent
Priest

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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.
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Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes.
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There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.
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The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.
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I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.
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The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.
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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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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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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 most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
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The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.
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One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
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Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.
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The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it.
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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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