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No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.
H. L. Mencken -
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
H. L. Mencken
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In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H. L. Mencken -
Men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.
H. L. Mencken -
The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.
H. L. Mencken -
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
H. L. Mencken -
The public...demands certainties...But there are no certainties.
H. L. Mencken -
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
H. L. Mencken
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A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H. L. Mencken -
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken -
There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of Milton is that he functions as a Milton.
H. L. Mencken -
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
H. L. Mencken -
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
H. L. Mencken -
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.
H. L. Mencken
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Every man is his own hell.
H. L. Mencken -
The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.
H. L. Mencken -
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. Mencken -
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
H. L. Mencken -
Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. Mencken -
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
H. L. Mencken
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Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.
H. L. Mencken -
Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks.
H. L. Mencken -
Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put into the box to prove that perjury is simply a compulsion neurosis, like beating time with the foot at a concert or counting the lampposts along the highway.
H. L. Mencken -
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken