Quote

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.

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
Politics
Apparent
Tickle
High
Gang
Soothe
Forget
Services
Sordid
Art
Makers
Incomparable
Doe
Appear
Scoundrels
Lows
Obscene
Midriff
Entertainment
Maker
Salient
Capacity
Utility
Unmitigated

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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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Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.
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Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
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One smart reader is worth a thousand boneheads.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
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For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.
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The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
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Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.
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