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All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.

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
Great
Onward
Men
Chiefly
Culinary
Sober
Cooking
Teetotalers
Murder
Abel
Food
Perpetrated
History
Villainy

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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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To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
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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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I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor
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We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
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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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The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.
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