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

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Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
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What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.
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Christian endeavor is notoriously hard on female pulchritude.
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The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.
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Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another Rosenkavailer.
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At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
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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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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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Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop
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When a woman says she won't, it's a good sign that she will. And when she says she will, it is an even better sign.
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Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals
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Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
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The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.
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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood there is, indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world.
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Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
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