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[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.
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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Historian
Journalist
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Literary Critic
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Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Men
Offense
Argument
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Crime
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Democracy
Sound
Better
Heinous
More quotes by H. L. Mencken
Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
H. L. Mencken
To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
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The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. Mencken
There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
H. L. Mencken
Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
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There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
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There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
H. L. Mencken
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.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.
H. L. Mencken
What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
H. L. Mencken
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
H. L. Mencken
A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
H. L. Mencken
No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
H. L. Mencken
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
H. L. Mencken
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
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Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
H. L. Mencken