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

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
H. L. Mencken
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Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
H. L. Mencken
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I have long been convinced that the idea of liberty is abhorrent to most human beings. What they want is security, not freedom. Thus it seldom causes any public indignation when an enterprising tyrant claps down on one of his enemies. To most men it seems a natural proceeding.
H. L. Mencken
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Debussy--A pretty girl with one blue eye and one brown one.
H. L. Mencken
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. Mencken
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Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
H. L. Mencken
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The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain disdain he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father.
H. L. Mencken
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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
H. L. Mencken
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
H. L. Mencken
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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.
H. L. Mencken
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In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
H. L. Mencken
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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
H. L. Mencken
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Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
H. L. Mencken
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
H. L. Mencken
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The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.
H. L. Mencken
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
H. L. Mencken
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For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.
H. L. Mencken
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It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
H. L. Mencken
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The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
H. L. Mencken
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Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.
H. L. Mencken