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I hate sports the way people who like sports hate common sense.

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
Common
Hate
Sense
Way
Like
People
Sports

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The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.
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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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Love is photogenic. It needs darkness room to develop
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The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.
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To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason
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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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Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. [...] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.
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The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.
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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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The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
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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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Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.
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Every man is his own hell.
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.
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There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.
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A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against will of all the rest of us, as now.
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Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently-one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
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To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong.
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