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The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel.

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
Even
Indeed
Prevails
Trying
Case
Scoundrels
Every
Mankind
Unpopular
Something
Strength
Instinctively
Men
Cases
Tries
Tell
Sheer
Truth
Dislike
Scoundrel
Reason
Mysterious
Dislikes

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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.
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Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
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If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.
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Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
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The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
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The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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It is only doubt that creates.
H. L. Mencken
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So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free association with one who is.
H. L. Mencken
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I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.
H. L. Mencken
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
H. L. Mencken
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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
H. L. Mencken
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Taxation, for example, is eternally lively it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories
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It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
H. L. Mencken
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
H. L. Mencken
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Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.
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Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
H. L. Mencken