H. L. Mencken Quotes

Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.

Quotes to Explore
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I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.
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Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
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The mutated Marfan gene creates a defective version of fibrillin, a protein that provides structural support for soft tissues like blood vessels. Marfan victims often die young, in fact, after their aortas grow threadbare and rupture.
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I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.
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My dad is afraid of my laugh.
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This quality, I mean Geoffrey was with me, was very easy doing - he loved me very much, I loved him very much, and we understood each other so well that it was a pleasure to make music.
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A woman caring for her children; a woman striving to excel in the private sector; a woman partnering with her neighbors to make their street safer; a woman running for office to improve her country - they all have something to offer, and the more our societies empower women, the more we receive in return.
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I have won the most national titles as a German, so what should I do after that? Lay back and take it easy? That's not how I am.
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I think Ali was a fan of mine, even though he never said it. A lot of fighters thought I was pretty good. Nobody every really spoke different on that. But a lot of fighters thought I was good so.
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I think my first thought on reaching the summit- of course, I was very, very pleased to be there, naturally - but my first thought was one of a little bit of surprise. I was a little bit surprised that here I was, Ed Hillary, on top of Mt. Everest. After all, this is the ambition of most mountaineers.
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That nature does not care, one way or the other, is the true abyss. That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with his contingency and the objective meaninglessness of his projecting meanings, is a truly unprecedented situation.
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One of the main lessons I have learned the last five years as Secretary-General is that the United Nations cannot function properly without the support of the business community and civil society. We need to have tripartite support - the governments, the business communities and the civil society.
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It's a tough life being a pop star. You know, at the end of the day when you've paid all the bills and put the kids through college and that, you know, there's only enough left for a small island off the South Pacific.
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My wife watches me like a hawk.
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I'm fine, except, you know, I broke my pelvis. And that's not much fun.
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The fact that I'm very close with my past relationships is something I pride myself on. My mom is still close to her first husband. It's nice to be able to enjoy someone in a different form.
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The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace.
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There are some musicians who are talented and see themselves as some kind of natural geniuses or something because of a certain amount of natural ability. But that is often rarely the case over the long term.
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There was all of about 30 kids where I went to school; we were all one clique.
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Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the centre of them. When one gets there the result is unrewarding, but the process is instructive and entertaining.
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Form and function are a unity, two sides of one coin. In order to enhance function, appropriate form must exist or be created.
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The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.
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On "[Total] Recall" also [sets were extraordinary], but this was next-level. They built two or three blocks of midtown Manhattan in 1926 and it was inhabited with 400 extras and 24 Model Ts and a train system and all that kind of nonsense. It was madness. You would walk into shops and they would have the goods from that period, it was just huge.
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Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.