A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. MENCKENFreedom of press is limited to those who own one.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
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An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
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The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
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For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
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The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
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There are two impossibilities in life: “just one drink” and “an honest politician.”
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Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.
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Change is not progress.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
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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.
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Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.
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