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H. L. Mencken Quotes

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"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."

"There is always an easy solution to every...problem - neat, plausible, and wrong."

"The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self- reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters."

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

"Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time."

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking."

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."

"Imagine the Creator as a stand up commedian - and at once the world becomes explicable."

"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."
Politics

"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence."

"We must respect the other fellow's religion,but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
Religion

"Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies."

"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."

"The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist, Jack."

"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -and both commonly succeed, and are right."
Politics

"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods."

"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier."

"There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli."

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."

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