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If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.

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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
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Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
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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 cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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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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Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.
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A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.
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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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Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later for another thing, they die earlier.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
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A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
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Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn
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The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties
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There are no ugly cigars, only ugly smokers.
H. L. Mencken
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Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.
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The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.
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In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.
H. L. Mencken