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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.

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
Always
Called
Classes
Class
Favor
Rights
Governments
Whittle
Often
Highly
Insofar
Government
Favors
Dubious
Ever
Civil
Preserved
Trying
Survive
Fanatics
Really
Special
Tries

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The objection to a Communist always resolves itself into the fact that he is not a gentleman.
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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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One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.
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When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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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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Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
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The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.
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Sunday is a day given over by Americans to wishing that the themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
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I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.
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Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
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Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.
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If all the lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones were sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.
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New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
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Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
H. L. Mencken