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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.

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
Nations
Individual
Government
Live
Deserves
Existing
Individuals
Deserve
Nation

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I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
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Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
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The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.
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It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty.
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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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Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
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When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.
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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
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Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
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The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
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Nature abhors a moron.
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All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.
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Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
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To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong.
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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.
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