H. L. Mencken Quotes

Women in general seem to me to be appreciably more intelligent than men. A great many of them suffer in silence from the imbecilities of their husbands.

Quotes to Explore
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In real life, I'm polite and nice all the time. It's fun to play people who aren't. It's escapism.
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I think, when I was younger, I believed in - and yearned for - conventional beauty. I thought there was a spectrum from ugly to beautiful, and that you could objectively plot everyone you saw along it.
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Africa is poor because its investors and its creditors are unspeakably rich.
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You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
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We are not opposed to public transportation. We are opposed to wasteful boondoggles.
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I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.
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Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.
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I'd love to have a 19th Century Russian book club where all the members had to act like the pretentious minor noblemen they were reading about.
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While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.
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I tell my students, even if you are an opinion journalist, your opinion should be based on facts.
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We can let circumstances rule us, or we can take charge and rule our lives from within.
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No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris.
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America is essentially an entrepreneurial culture: the sizzle is the steak, because, after all, if you buy the sizzle, the steak comes with it. Canada's, in contrast, is a primary-producing culture: we'll buy the steak and hope to get a little sizzle with it. But we know we can't eat sizzle.
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I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.
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Good acting is good acting, however you learn it. Some people who haven't studied are amazing. Some people like Leonardo DiCaprio are naturally gifted - he's learned technique by working with people early on.
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I love action movies.
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Richard Nixon was the best thing that ever happened to journalism. I mean this guy was wonderful. Just when you thought he could get no worse, he got worse.
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Conflict is the beginning of consciousness.
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I have spent a great deal of my life being part of minorities. Some of the people I admire the most in the world have had the courage to defend, against wind and tide, minority viewpoints in those frightening times when any disagreement with universal conformity is identified as treason.
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That's the difference between family and friends. Family is always there, no matter what, even when it's not right next door. Which means that you'll find a way to keep the connection alive. Especially since you realize how important it is.
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When you cut your life into a film - 90-some minutes of film - you end up taking snapshots and vignettes of the highlights of it - marriage, divorce, death, success, fame, loss. The up and the down and the up again.
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Kids will not listen to that. They're going to experiment no matter what, so you have to be honest.
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There were basically three themes. One was the sun theme which is the guitar when he'd get sun on his leg and it comes again in the end. And there's of course the lullaby which Dido sang, "If I Rise." And then there's this driving guitar which is the motivation theme.
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Women in general seem to me to be appreciably more intelligent than men. A great many of them suffer in silence from the imbecilities of their husbands.