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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

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
Theory
Theories
Tenths
Example
Concerns
Gaudy
Either
Directly
Smallpox
Many
Gay
Preposterous
Much
Nine
Moreover
Made
Golf
Eternally
Drama
Lively
Concern
Taxation
Mellowed

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My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.
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It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.
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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.
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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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No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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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'.
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: it's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him... One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them.
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Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
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The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.
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To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
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Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
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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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The common notion that free speech prevails in the United States always makes me laugh.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man.
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Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
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The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
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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.
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