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Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.

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
Problem
Work
Every
Solution
Complexes
Complex
Solutions
Simple
Doesn

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I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.
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Evil: That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake
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Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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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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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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Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.
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When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
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The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man - say a Tennessee Holy Roller - is really very small.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind
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If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
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The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.
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No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt--a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve.
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Happiness is the china shop love is the bull.
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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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Love begins like a triolet and ends like a college yell.
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Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
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Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. 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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The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
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