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Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.

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
Men
Deliberately
Added
Note
Foolish
Notes
Ground
Wise
Immemorial
Interesting
Imbecility

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Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post.
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If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense.
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The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.
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The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
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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?
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Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
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Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
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When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
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Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
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In every woman's life there is one real and consuming love. But very few women guess which one it is.
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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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But I wonder where we will land if trial judges begin deciding that the fact that a man has committed an atrocious crime is proof sufficient that he is not responsible for his acts.
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The common man knows exactly what he wants...and deserves to get it good and hard.
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The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
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[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.
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High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.
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Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.
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If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.
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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
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