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The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion.

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
Thinness
Motive
Religion
Fear
Ends

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The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.
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The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
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Who will argue that 98.6 Farenheit is the right temperature for man? As for me, I decline to do it. It may be that we are all actually freezing hence the pervading stupidity of mankind. At 110 or 115 degrees even archbishops might be intelligent.
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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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Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.
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The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
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The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.
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Nothing can come out of an artist that is not in the man.
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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 man loses his sense of direction after four drinks a woman loses hers after four kisses.
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Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
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The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
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Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
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Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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There are two kinds of music German music and bad music.
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As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain.
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The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
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A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it- this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy.
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