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The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
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Literary Critic
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Baltimore
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Henry Louis Mencken
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Puritanism
Also
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Better
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Stalking
Seasick

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The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.
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Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
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My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.
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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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There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
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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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It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
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If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
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A tin horn politician with the manner of a rural corn doctor and the mien of a ham actor
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