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A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

H. L. Mencken

There is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.
H. L. MENCKEN

Believe Ideas Stupidity Teaching Yourself
Change is not progress.
H. L. MENCKEN

Change Difference One Liner Progress
The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back.
H. L. MENCKEN

Citizenship Liberty Lost People War
Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. MENCKEN

Fear God Happiness
No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.
H. L. MENCKEN

Corruption Dedication Enemy Himself Man Politics Professional Waste
Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.
H. L. MENCKEN

Discovery Government Human Liberty Wisdom
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. MENCKEN

Election Liberty Material Politics
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
H. L. MENCKEN

Courage Emotion Fear Himself Men Safety
There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.
H. L. MENCKEN

Difference Kind Smart Stay
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
H. L. MENCKEN

Freedom Funny Limitation Oneself Politics
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.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy End Freedom Government Imagination Policy Practice Safety
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Freedom Imagination World
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. MENCKEN

Himself Men Oneself
After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.
H. L. MENCKEN

Action Hell Talk
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
H. L. MENCKEN

Belief Himself Mystery Right True Victim
There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.
H. L. MENCKEN

Democracy Difference Vote

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

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A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

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