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Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.

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
High
Sons
Actually
Nine
Fact
Ten
Claims
President
Son
Facts
Bottom
Nonentity
Political
Americans
Relatives
Government
Usually
Proved

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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.
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The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
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The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.
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A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
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There's really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
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To the extent that I am genuinely educated, I am suspicious of all the things that the average citizen believes and the average pedagogue teaches.
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War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
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Why do men go to zoos?
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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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Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.
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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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Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
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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.
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.
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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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