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

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The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
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There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]
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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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Here is tragedy - and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.
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The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
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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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It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty.
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The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
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Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
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War is the only sport which is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport which has any intelligible use.
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Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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The music critic, Huneber, could never quite make up his mind about a new symphony until he had seen the composer's mistress.
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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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Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels two-thirds, more or less, idiots and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.
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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
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