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Quote by H. L. Mencken

“An altruist is one who would be sincerely sorry to see his neighbor's children devoured by wolves.”

Quote by H. L. Mencken

Author

H. L. Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. Born on September 12, 1880, and passing away on January 29, 1956, Mencken is renowned for his significant contributions to American culture and language, particularly through his satirical essays and critical analyses of the American establishment. more

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“Citizenship in New York is now worth no more than citizenship in Arkansas, for it is open to any applicant from the marshes of Bessarabia, and, still worse, to any applicant from Arkansas.”

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Book:Prejudices Fourth Series

Source: Prejudices Fourth Series

“The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.”

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Author:H. L. Mencken

“The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.”

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“To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am - a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions - can be so happy as he can be in the United States.”

“Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.”

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Author:H. L. Mencken

“What are the hallmarks of a competent writer of fiction? The first, it seems to me, is that he should be immensely interested in human beings, and have an eye sharp enough to see into them, and a hand clever enough to draw them as they are. The second is that he should be able to set them in imaginary situations which display the contents of their psyches effectively, and so carry his reader swiftly and pleasantly from point to point of what is called a good story.”

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“The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.”

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Book:Minority Report

Source: Minority Report

“School teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers.”

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Book:The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

Source: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

“It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.”

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“Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual.”

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