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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
Prophet
Useful
Gods
Kings
Deals
Exploiters
History
Prophets
Men
Captains
Mainly

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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
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But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.
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At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
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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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Philadelphia is the most pecksniffian of American cities, and thus probably leads the world.
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It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.
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In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
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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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Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
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A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
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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 cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
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If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
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Why do men delight in work? Fundamentally, I suppose, because there is a sense of relief and pleasure in getting something done - a kind of satisfaction not unlike that which a hen enjoys on laying an egg.
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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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