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If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.

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
Men
Conditioned
Oil
Stones
Constitution
Law
Free
May
Believe
Gall

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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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Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.
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The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
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But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.
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A poet over 30 is pathetic
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It is only doubt that creates.
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Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
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No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
H. L. Mencken
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I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.
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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
H. L. Mencken
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Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
H. L. Mencken
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
H. L. Mencken
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
H. L. Mencken
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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
H. L. Mencken
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Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered there is only error to be exposed.
H. L. Mencken
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Why do men go to zoos?
H. L. Mencken
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Unionism, seldom if ever, uses such powers as it has to ensure better work almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguard bad work.
H. L. Mencken
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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H. L. Mencken
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A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks a woman loses hers after four kisses.
H. L. Mencken
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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
H. L. Mencken