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All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.

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
Winning
Syllogism
Talk
Moonshine
Much
Conquering
People
Impeccable
Appealing
Conquer
Intelligence
Influence

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It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
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The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.
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The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.
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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
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I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
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Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
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Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
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Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.
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