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

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In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
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The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.
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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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Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.
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The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.
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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol. It is there that the worst crimes are committed it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered, and spread broadcast.
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Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
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Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
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Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.
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A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
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Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.
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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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[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.
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It is not a sign of communal well-being when men turn to their government to execute all their business for them, but rather a sign of decay, as in the United States today. The state, indeed, is but one of the devices that a really healthy community sets up to manage its affairs.
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The late William Jennings Bryan, L.L.D., always had one great advantage in controversy he was never burdened with an understanding of his opponent's case.
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If there were only three women left in the world, two of them would immediately convene a court-martial to try the other one.
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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
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