H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 29

• The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.

  H. L. Mencken

  Strong, Fake, Support

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.80, Knopf

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• They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Freedom, Taken

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• The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Political, Campaigns

  "Mencken Chrestomathy".

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• There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.

  H. L. Mencken

  Fear, Cutting, Men

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• Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

  H. L. Mencken

  Perseverance, Belief, Impossible

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

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• Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Effort, Resistance

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.204, Knopf

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• [Referring to FDR] If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.

  H. L. Mencken

  White, House, Cannibalism

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• The effect of every sort of New Deal is to increase and prosper the criminal class. It teaches precisely what all professional criminals believe, to wit, that, it is neither virtuous nor necessary to suffer and to do without.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Government, Class

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.91, Knopf

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• There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Men, People

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

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• The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Way, Flattering

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.29, Cosimo, Inc.

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• A sound American is simply one who has put out of his mind all doubts and questionings, and who accepts instantly, and as incontrovertible gospel, the whole body of official doctrine of his day, whatever it may be and no matter how often it may change. The instant he challenges it, no matter how timorously and academically, he ceases by that much to be a loyal and creditable citizen of the republic.

  H. L. Mencken

  Change, Loyalty, Time

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.316, Vintage

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• I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Political, Slavery

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.616, Vintage

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• Love, to the inferior man, remains almost wholly a physical matter. The heroine he most admires is the one who offers the grossest sexual provocation; the hero who makes his wife roll her eyes is a perambulating phallus.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hero, Eye, Men

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.27, Knopf

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• Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Safety, Fool

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• A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Men, Special

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.620, Vintage

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• To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Russia, Evil

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• Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.

  H. L. Mencken

  Simple, Problem, Complexes

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• The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation.

  H. L. Mencken

  Education, Intelligent, Men

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

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• Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas

  H. L. Mencken

  Ideas, Belief, Politician

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• Only a jackass ever talks over his affairs with a woman, whether she be his sweetheart, wife, or sister, or mother.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mother, Women, Wife

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• A living language is like a man suffering incessantly from small hemorrhages, and what it needs above all else is constant transactions of new blood from other tongues. The day the gates go up, that day it begins to die.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Blood, Suffering

  "The 100 best nonfiction books: No 49 - The American Language by HL Mencken (1919)" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. January 9, 2017.

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• Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.

  H. L. Mencken

  Law, Atmosphere, Culture

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.360, Knopf

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• No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Men, Honor

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.26, Knopf

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• The priest, realistically considered, is the most immoral of men, for he is always willing to sacrifice every other sort of good to the one good of his arcanum - the vague body of mysteries that he calls the truth.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sacrifice, Men, Atheism

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• That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Prejudice, Arguing

  H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.7, 谷月社

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