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To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

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
Dignity
Inquiry
Filled
Revelation
Ignorance
Gaps
Simply
Argue
Gratuitous
Knowledge
Revelations
Preposterous
Give
Intuition
Seeker
Must
Arguing
Seekers
Giving
Patient
Confront

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A large part of altruism, even when it is perfectly honest, is grounded upon the fact that it is uncomfortable to have unhappy people about one.
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Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
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Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
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The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.
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I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
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Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
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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.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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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.
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The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.
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I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
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Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
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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.
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I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.
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Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.
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It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.
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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
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