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I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech - alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.

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
Speech
Mightiest
Society
Humblest
Freedom
Utmost
Living
Alike
Thought
Conduct
Believe
Consistent
Men
Organized
Complete

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Why do men go to zoos?
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Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.
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The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.
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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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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs.
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Conscience is the accumulated sediment of ancestral faint- heartedness
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When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don't forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.
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A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
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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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The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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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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There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
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Hamlet has been played by 5,000 actors, no wonder he is crazy.
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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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