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H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
Nowhere in the world is superiority more easily attained, or more eagerly admitted. The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus.
Never let your inferiors do you a favor. It will be extremely costly.
No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.
My guess is that well over eighty per cent of the human race goes through life without ever having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before, and by thousands. A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic.
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination papers.
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later. For another thing, they die earlier.
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind -- that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overborne by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
For one American husband who maintains a chorus girl in Levantine luxury around the corner, there are hundreds who are as true to their oaths, year in and year out, as so many convicts in the deathhouse.
Equality before the law is probably forever inattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.