The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure h… - H. L. Mencken

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The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God's chillun, but that as soon as he has any luck he owes it to the Devil.

H. L. Mencken

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About H. L. Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken (12 September 1880 – 29 January 1956), known as H. L. Mencken, was a twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore" and the "American Nietzsche". He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century.

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Alternative Names: Henry Louis Mencken

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George Bernard Shaw Christopher Hitchens Gore Vidal Edmund Burke G. K. Chesterton

Additional quotes by H. L. Mencken

For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. The more stupid the man, the larger his stock of adamantine assurances, the heavier his load of faith.

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.

No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.

The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God's chillun, but that as soon as he has any luck he owes it to the Devil. - H. L. Mencken

About H. L. Mencken

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