H. L. Mencken

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There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Government
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Courtroom : A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Jesus
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Skin diseases are something doctors like, the patient neither dies nor gets well.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Get Well
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We suffer most when the White House busts with ideas.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Ideas
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The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Equality
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The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Men
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I believe that it should be perfectly lawful to print even things that outrage the pruderies and prejudices of the general, so long as any honest minority, however small, wants to read them. The remedy of the majority is not prohibition, but avoidance.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Believe
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I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Profound
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I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Freedom
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Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Men
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If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: People
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Always remember this: If you don't attend the funerals of your friends, they will certainly not attend yours.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Funeral
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Richard Strauss--Old Home Week in Gomorrah
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Music
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An author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in. His over-powering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized nations, he takes it out by putting his yells on paper. Such is the thing called self-expression.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Men
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A free citizen in a free state, it seems to me, has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will, so long as he does not disturb the general peace. If any other citizen, offended by the spectacle, makes a pother, then that other citizen, and not the man exercising his inalienable right, should be put down by the police.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Exercise
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The notion that anything is gained by fixing a language in a groove is cherished only by pedants.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Fixing
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Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Freedom
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The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Education
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No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Lying
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All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that most of it will be caused by religion. I count Prohibition as a part of religion, for it has surely become so in the United States. The Prohibitionists, seeing all their other arguments destroyed by the logic of events, have fallen back upon the mystical doctrine that God is somehow on their side, and that opposing them thus takes on the character of blasphemy.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Character
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The learned are seldom pretty fellows, and in many cases their appearance tends to discourage a love of study in the young.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Study
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The Gettysburg Adress has been included, of late, in several anthologies of poetry. It actually meets the major requirement of all poetry: It is a mellifluous and emotional statement of the obviously not true. The men who fought for self-determination at Gettysburg were not the Federals but the Confederates.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Peace
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The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Catholic
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Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Wise
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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.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Intelligent
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That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Race
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I am, in fact, the complete anti-Messiah, and detest converts almost as much as I detest missionaries. My writings, such as they are, have had only one purpose: to attain for H. L. Mencken that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Writing
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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Freedom
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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.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Thinking
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What I got in Sunday school ... was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian God preposterous.... The act of worship, as carried on by Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves groveling before a being who, if he really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of respected.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Christian
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If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, Harry Truman would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Country
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The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Funny
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Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Law