H. L. Mencken Quotes

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

Quotes to Explore
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A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.
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American audiences are great. They get what I am doing, but as my band will tell you, nowhere tops the Irish audience. They are just brilliant. They are very open, but the Americans and Spanish come a close second.
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Just because I have two world records, everyone assumes that means automatically it is two guaranteed gold medals, but it isn't like that, and anything can happen in a race.
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I'm from New York, so I'm not a big driver.
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Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
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It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.
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When you appear on the screen, often enough you become sexy, even if you look like an elephant.
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Everybody likes money. I like money. I need money to survive. But I don't love money. Money is not my god.
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Oh I've done bungee jumping. Skydiving, I have motorcycles that I ride. I'm a little bit of an adrenaline junkie in that way.
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The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural... The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white.
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A hit film is what we work for as actors, as that goes to show that we have managed to entertain our audiences who shower us with their love and affection throughout the years.
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I grew up in Hollywood during WWII, and my mother was afraid that my father was going to be drafted because she didn't think we were going to be able to live on army pay. She didn't want to have to get a job, so she decided to put me to work, and that's how I got started in the movies.
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It ain't no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don't break any.
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Like most struggling writers trying to get their scripts commissioned, I had to do something odd to pay the rent. So, aged 21, I started up my own small cheesecake company in Philadelphia.
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I've never liked categories; I've never liked boxes; I've always tried to be unconventional as much as I possibly could.
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When you have the first show set in India on American television, there's gonna be a Nervous Nellie kind of vibe.
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I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.
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Obama's ascendancy unhinged the radical right, offering a unified target to competing camps of racial, nativist and religious animus.
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I'm very unpredictable, but at the end of the day, I'm working. Sometimes things change in my life. It's like, 'Hold up - that ain't feel good. That felt good.' And that's how I look at anything I do.
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I've turned down shows offering large amounts of money.
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Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return.
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I believe in the will. I believe in discipline. I believe in the organization. I believe in the rigor that gives us work. I believe in love as an engine of all things. I believe in the light. I believe in God. I believe in kindness.
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I believe in that old adage that 'as goes California, so goes the country.'
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The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.