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History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.

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
Mainly
Prophet
Useful
Gods
Kings
Deals
Exploiters
History
Prophets
Men
Captains

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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
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Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.
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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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Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
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The real man lies in the depths of subconscious.
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The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.
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There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.
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It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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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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The longest sentence you can form with two words is: I do.
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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
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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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The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.
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