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The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.

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
Speech
Ready
American
Alarm
Free
Detest
Really
Alarms
People
Slightest
Eager
Convinced

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The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
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Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.
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A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.
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A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
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If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
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Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.
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Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.
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Happiness, like health, is probably also only a passing accident. For a moment or two the organism is irritated so little that it is not conscious of it for the duration of that moment it is happy. Thus a hog is always happier than a man, and a bacillus is happier than a hog
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The only really respectable Protestants are the fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.
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I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
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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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The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
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To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse
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The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls.
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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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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 impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.
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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
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He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.
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If what I may believe - about gall-stones, the Constitution, castor oil, or God - is conditioned by law, then I am not a free man.
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