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The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.
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
Make
Nonsense
Absurd
Accept
Scholars
Accepting
Genesis
Hell
Wholly
School
Scholar
Book
Threatened
Even
Sunday
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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
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Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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Man weeps to think that he will die so soon woman, that she was born so long ago.
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It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.
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One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.
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I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free speech, whatever the excuse.
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