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The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small.

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
Dog
Atheism
Difference
Holy
Differences
Stupidest
Small
Roller
Really
Smartest
Men
Tennessee

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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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I am a strict monogamist: it is twenty years since I last went to bed with two women at once, and then I was in my cups and not myself.
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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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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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Man weeps to think that he will die so soon woman, that she was born so long ago.
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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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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
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It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.
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Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
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For me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.
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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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The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.
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I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding.
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The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
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Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
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