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I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
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Baltimore
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Henry Louis Mencken
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The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.
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A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
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On one issue, at least, men and women agree. They both distrust women.
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He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
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I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
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It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
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Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.
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There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli.
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A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks a woman loses hers after four kisses.
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Pedagogues: More than any other class of blind leaders of the blind they are responsible for the degrading standardization which now afflicts the American people.
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.
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Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
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The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
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Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
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