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There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.
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
Politicians
Politician
Promise
Every
Cannibals
Would
Cannibal
Missionaries
Constituents
Pot
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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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.
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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.
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Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.
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The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
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In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.
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The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.
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When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.
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I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
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The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.
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There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
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There are no institutions in America: there are only fashions.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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