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" Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true. "
H. L. Mencken
Admitted
Be True
True
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" No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single. "
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" Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good. "
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" The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. "
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" 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. "
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" The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor. "
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" The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt. "
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" Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age. "
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" A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. "
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" When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands. "
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" Life is a dead-end street. "
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" Historian: an unsuccessful novelist. "
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History
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" Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too. "
H. L. Mencken
Women
Than
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" Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed. "
H. L. Mencken
Truth
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" 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
Fear
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" Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. "
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Very
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" I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them. "
H. L. Mencken
Bad
Want
Shy
" It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry. "
H. L. Mencken
Now
Chemistry
Mathematics
" Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in. "
H. L. Mencken
Time
Day
Election
" 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
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" Every man is his own hell. "
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" When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before. "
H. L. Mencken
Two
Never
New
" No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight. "
H. L. Mencken
Long
Average
Matter
" The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. "
H. L. Mencken
False
Save
Humanity
" No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not. "
H. L. Mencken
Woman
Always
Man
" We must be willing to pay a price for freedom. "
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Must
Price
Willing
" Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. "
H. L. Mencken
Belief
Democracy
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" A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. "
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Original
Capable
Society
" It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf. "
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Impossible
Imagine
Good
" For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. "
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Wrong
Simple
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" I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. "
H. L. Mencken
Trying
Government
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