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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
Government
Live
Deserves
Existing
Individuals
Deserve
Nation
Nations
Individual

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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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The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
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When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.
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Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.
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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
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In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
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There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives.
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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
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When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
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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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They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
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Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
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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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The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.
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