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In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.

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
Mankind
Always
Rogue
Rogues
Combat
Sympathy
Fool

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It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small.
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Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
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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 me to go into politics would be like sending a virgin into a house of ill-repute.
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The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
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A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.
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A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
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I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
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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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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
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Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.
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I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
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He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
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My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
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The chief knowledge that's man on from reading books is the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading.
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century.
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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
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