History Quote by H. L. Mencken

“There is no record in human history of a happy philosopher: they exist only in romantic legend.”

H. L. Mencken

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More by H. L. Mencken

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

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A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.

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By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences.…

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So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free…

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Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead.

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The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.

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For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble…

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Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

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The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must…

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There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend…

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Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

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Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws… There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased…

H. L. Mencken

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More History quotes

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat…

Simon Schama

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It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small…

Norman Vincent Peale

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The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will…

Frederick Buechner

The NBA is my history.

Penny Hardaway

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History has often showed us the strength of the forces that are unleashed by the yearning for freedom. It moved people to overcome their fears and openly confront dictators such as in East Germany and Eastern Europe about 22 years ago... The yearning for freedom cannot be contained by walls for long. It was this yearning that brought down the…

Angela Merkel

We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what…

John Dryden

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What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end.

Jean Cocteau

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Things live and die, and then someone processes them into edible portions. This is a complete telling of the story, 'Food.' The basic plot…

David Fahrenthold

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History is a certain way, but you just change the point of view a little bit, and you discover a whole new side of…

Allison Schroeder

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We're at a point in history were we have to become a part of the neighborhood of inhabited planets, like a neighborhood of a community, which we have not even acknowledged that that community exists up until this point.

Edgar Mitchell