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Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
H. L. Mencken -
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
H. L. Mencken
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As for me, my literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one main idea, to wit, the idea of freedom. I am, in brief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety, and know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems (at the moment) to be the truth
H. L. Mencken -
As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
H. L. Mencken -
The older I grow the less I esteem mere ideas. In politics, particularly, they are transient and unimportant. . . . There are only men who have character and men who lack it.
H. L. Mencken -
Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion of ideas; he seldom allowed sentimentality to turn him from the glaring fact.
H. L. Mencken -
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
H. L. Mencken -
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
H. L. Mencken
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There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.
H. L. Mencken -
Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.
H. L. Mencken -
Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
H. L. Mencken -
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
H. L. Mencken -
It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.
H. L. Mencken -
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
H. L. Mencken
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I well recall my emotions when I came upon the grave of Beethoven in the Central Friedhof, with its incomparable guard of honor - Mozart, Schubert, Gluck, Brahms, Hugo Wolf and Johann Strauss!
H. L. Mencken -
What I admire most in any man is a serene spirit, a steady freedom from moral indignation, and all-embracing tolerance--in brief,what is commonly called sportsmanship.
H. L. Mencken -
No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
H. L. Mencken -
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.
H. L. Mencken -
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
H. L. Mencken -
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
H. L. Mencken
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It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
H. L. Mencken -
Life is a dead-end street.
H. L. Mencken -
A man who has throttled a bad impulse has at least some consolation in his agonies, but a man who has throttled a good one is in a bad way indeed.
H. L. Mencken -
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
H. L. Mencken