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Never drink if you've got any work to do. Never.

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
Drink
Work
Never

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

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The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.
H. L. Mencken
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Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar.
H. L. Mencken
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The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.
H. L. Mencken
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The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.
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Once a woman passes a certain point in intelligence she finds it almost impossible to get a husband: she simply cannot go on listening without snickering.
H. L. Mencken
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Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
H. L. Mencken
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Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.
H. L. Mencken
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A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.
H. L. Mencken
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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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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
H. L. Mencken
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The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
H. L. Mencken
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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.
H. L. Mencken
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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. Mencken
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It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
H. L. Mencken
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Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
H. L. Mencken
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Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.
H. L. Mencken
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I never agree with Communists or any other kind of kept men.
H. L. Mencken
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All the great villainies of history, from the murder of Abel onward, have been perpetrated by sober men, chiefly by Teetotalers.
H. L. Mencken
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Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.
H. L. Mencken
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I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
H. L. Mencken