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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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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
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I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
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When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don't want them to be falling ill of smallpox
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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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The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
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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.
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The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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I'm thoroughly convinced that editors don't help authors.
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The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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Man weeps to think that he will die so soon woman, that she was born so long ago.
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The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.
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Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.
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