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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?

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
Humanity
Cheating
Lying
Resist
Government
Consists
Find
Stealing
Operandi
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Honesty
Whorehouse
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Modus
People
Expect
Murdering
Whose
Chastity

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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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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
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Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.
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Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.
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The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.
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New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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The instant I reach Heaven, I'm going to speak to God very sharply.
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In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
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Absence is the dark-room in which lovers develop negatives.
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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
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Elections are futures markets in stolen property.
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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
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Los Angeles: nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.
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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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