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There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.

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
Fashions
Institutions
Fashion
America

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When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don't want them to be falling ill of smallpox
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
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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.
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If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.
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We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had one, at least since Washington, whose fundamental character was solider and more admirable.
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Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
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If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.
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The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
H. L. Mencken
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If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
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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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The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
H. L. Mencken
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The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
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Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
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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 average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.
H. L. Mencken