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What is the professor's function? To pass on to numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and largely untrue.

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
Function
Called
Fragmentary
Knowledge
Untrue
Body
Unimportant
Professor
Largely
Professors
Pass

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What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States.
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There are two impossibilities in life: just one drink and an honest politician.
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When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
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Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
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People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
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Philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it.
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No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
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It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
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What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.
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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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Taxation, for example, is eternally lively it concerns nine-tenths of us more directly than either smallpox or golf, and has just as much drama in it moreover, it has been mellowed and made gay by as many gaudy, preposterous theories
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The first kiss is stolen by the man the last is begged by the woman.
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Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
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[Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.
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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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