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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.

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
Firsts
First
Scheme
Trying
Constructs
World
Schemes
Tries
Fit
Philosophy
Happiness

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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
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I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
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Never underestimate the bad taste of the American public
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Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity.
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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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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What we need in this country is a general improvement in eating. We have the best raw materials in the world, both quantitatively and qualitatively, but most of them are ruined in the process of preparing them for the table.
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There are two impossibilities in life: just one drink and an honest politician.
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The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.
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The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a given subject sufficiently well to teach it is usually unwilling to do so.
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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
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Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.
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The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.
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Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
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In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
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