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A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.

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
Skepticism
Suffered
Envy
Including
Imbecile
Especially
Pang
Ideas
Prevailed
Never
Imbeciles
Skeptic

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The real man lies in the depths of subconscious.
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I know of no human being who has a better time than an eager and energetic young reporter.
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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
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A living language is like a man suffering incessantly from small hemorrhages, and what it needs above all else is constant transactions of new blood from other tongues. The day the gates go up, that day it begins to die.
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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
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Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
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But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.
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Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.
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Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
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Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality.
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It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs.
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Who ever heard, indeed, of an autobiography that was not (interesting)? I can recall none in all the literature of the world
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The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls.
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There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.
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At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
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