H. L. Mencken Quotes

The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.

H. L. Mencken

• Ideas
• Adopt
• Idiotic
• Enforce

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Quotes to Explore

• I believe that communal admiration of individuals is healthy for society. It facilitates, in one way, the base of our universal standard, morals, but also publicly espouses the virtue of certain practices that are kind of like 'inherently good' in some kind of ideas of what the good is.

  

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• I have new ideas every day, and I always want to take on new challenges.

  

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• I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

  

  Iain Banks
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• The cartoon is a metaphor really for the fact that it's almost impossible in our celebrity obsessed culture to move around genres and sort of change you ideas, change your face, you know?

  

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• My office in Milan is in an old factory. I have all my companies here, including Italia Independent and Independent Ideas.

  

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• Spiritual life can certainly follow the pattern one sees in the fake martial arts, with most teachers making nebulous and magical claims that never get tested, while their students derange themselves with weird ideas, empty rituals, and other affectations.

  

  Sam Harris
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• Scientists and academics in particular focus on detail and the minutiae. When they talk to each other, they usually don't focus on the broad ideas; they don't focus on social interconnectedness. They focus on the task that they're doing.

  

  Aaron D. O'Connell
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• When I first came to the Bay area, I worked in Silicon Valley in the early to mid-'90s, and I think what mattered then was our ability as designers to create a vision around people's ideas.

  

  Yves Behar
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• You don't have to be scared of me, because I am loyal. Why are people so scared of creative ideas and so scared of truth? All I want to do is do good.

  

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• But it's like the horror of being in a studio with a blank canvas. I used to always run out of ideas because there are so many possibilities and I would just think, well what am I going to do now!

  

  Damien Hirst
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• It's so inspiring to be around other people who have ideas you haven't thought of, and all of a sudden you're like, 'Wow! That's so amazing!' I definitely want everything I do to just get better and better.

  

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• I've made myself laugh from some ideas - but I've never scared myself.

  

  R. L. Stine
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• I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

  

  Irwin Shaw
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• When politicians seek to restrict political speech, it is invariably to protect their own incumbency and avoid having to defend their policies in the marketplace of ideas.

  

  Ted Olson
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• Every sketch goes through a rewrite stage where a group of writers sits around a table and pitches more jokes and ideas for the piece.

  

  Vanessa Bayer
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• I've never been a fan of directors who clutter a piece with all sorts of crazy preconceptions or weird ideas.

  

  Dan Stevens
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• Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change.

  

  Barbara Januszkiewicz
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• You don't have to subject yourself to the sweep and rigor of Bourdieu's book 'Distinction' to feel how thoroughly a lower-calorie version of its ideas has been absorbed into the cultural bloodstream.

  

  Garth Risk Hallberg
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• I realized, 'Oh, it's easier to get what I want if I embrace the sex symbol thing.' Microphones are more in my face, and I can say things about the kids that I mentor and open more access to more doors.

  

  Omari Hardwick
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• Time has stopped; time is racing. Lochie's lips are rough yet smooth, hard yet gentle. His fingers are strong: I feel them in my hair and on my neck and down my arms and against my back. And I never want him to let me go.

  

  Tabitha Suzuma
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• I don't think that other races are inferior, I just think that there's something special about white people. Sometimes, when I think about all the things white people have accomplished throughout history, I smile, and I nod, and I think to myself, 'Yeah, I'm glad I'm on that team.'

  

  Zach Braff
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• My decorating and renovation skills are nil - indeed, I once used a shower curtain from Pottery Barn as 'window dressing.'

  

  Candace Bushnell
  • Skills
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• I only wear the latest thing. It's my job.

  

  Karl Lagerfeld
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• The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • Ideas
  • Adopt
  • Idiotic