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The essential dilemma of education is to be found in the fact that the sort of man (or woman) who knows a given subject sufficiently well to teach it is usually unwilling to do so.

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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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.
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The course of the United States in World War II, I said, was dishonest, dishonorable, and ignominious, and the Sunpapers, by supporting Roosevelt's foreign policy, shared in this disgrace.
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Conscience is the accumulated sediment of ancestral faint- heartedness
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A living language is like a man suffering incessantly from small hemorrhages, and what it needs above all else is constant transactions of new blood from other tongues. The day the gates go up, that day it begins to die.
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Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
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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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Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
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There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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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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The first kiss is stolen by the man the last is begged by the woman.
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Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
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The other day a dog peed on me. A bad sign.
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The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
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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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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.
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