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The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.

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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
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Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Respect
Arguments
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Plain
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Seldom
Littles
Bother
Little
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Indeed
Clergy
Humans
Argument
Plausible
Make
Intelligence
Superstitions

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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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There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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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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Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
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The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
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In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
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If x is the population of the United States and y is the degree of imbecility of the average American, then democracy is the theory that x times y is less than y
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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
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Man is always looking for someone to boast to woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
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Debussy--A pretty girl with one blue eye and one brown one.
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I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
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Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.
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The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
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