You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
H. L. MENCKENThe final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
More H. L. Mencken Quotes
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Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
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People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.
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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.
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Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.
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A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
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A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
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It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.
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Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people.
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The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H. L. MENCKEN