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Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah

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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
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Baltimore
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Henry Louis Mencken
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Richard
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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
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Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
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There are no ugly cigars, only ugly smokers.
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Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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There are two impossibilities in life: just one drink and an honest politician.
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Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.
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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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Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
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The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
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It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
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All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.
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