Say What?

A growing page of memorable quotes. Heavy on Mencken.

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True, there is all sorts of religious extremism all over the place, but the reason for this partly has to do with the fascist attitudes and language of absolutism coming from Washington. It’s challenging for people outside of America that Bush was re-elected. It means we’re all going to have to work a lot harder to understand what so many more Americans than we thought really want. It’s an identity shift in our minds about America and maybe for many Americans as well.~Tilda Swinton

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Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.~Benjamin Disraeli

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In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
~Quentin Crisp

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For youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence: it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes. When a schoolmaster is an ass, which happens in Christendom more often than not, you may be sure that even the dullest of his pupils is well aware of it.

~H.L. Mencken

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Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
~Benjamin Disraeli

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The eugenists constantly make the false assumption that a healthy degree of human progress demands a large and steady supply of absolutely first-rate men. Here they succumb to the modern craze for mass production. Because a hundred policemen, or garbage men, or bootleggers are manifestly better than one they conclude absurdly that a hundred Beethovens would be better than one. But this is not true. The actual value of a genius often lies in his very singularity. …. The number of first-rate men necessary to make a high civilization is really very small. If the United States could produce one Shakespeare or Newton or Bach or Michaelangelo or Vesalius a century it would be doing better than any nation has ever done in history. Such a culture as we have is due to a group of men so small that all of them alive at one time could be hauled in a single Pullman train. …. …. Imagine a country housing 100 head of Aristotles! It would be as unhappy as a city housing 100 head of Jesse James. ~ H.L. Mencken

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Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.~Benjamin Disraeli 
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Oh Jack, you pay me to act in that shit. You don’t pay me to watch it! ~ Peter Lorre – to Jack L. Warner, after Warner asked him why he wasn’t at the “Casablanca” premiere

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A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.~Benjamin Disraeli

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What’s frustrating is that we’re short of really great writing and great ideas.  Blade Runner was full of them. Now, everything’s evolved into superheroes and it’s boring. If I see one more superhero movie I’m going to shoot myself. ~Ridley Scott

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 Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.~Benjamin Disraeli

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A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.~ H.L. Mencken

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Archbishop – A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.~ H.L. Mencken

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I don’t like peas, and I’m glad I don’t like peas because if I liked peas, I would eat them, and I HATE  them! ~ stupic circular logic

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On Anne Coulter:

“I almost feel sorry for that serially-rejected cachectic spinster with a red hourglass on her dowager’s hump. She had better find a man quickly before she becomes the anorexic cross between Miss Haversham, Baby Jane Hudson and a wolverine.” ~unknown blogger

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“Oh Jack, your hearing must be off. I never said you’re a prig! No, what I said was that you’re a prick.”

~ Humphrey Bogart to Jack L. Warner (Head of Warner Bros. Studios, and a prick)

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The honorary degree is a way of honoring a pompous ass. No honest person would accept a degree he hadn’t worked for. Honorary degrees are suitable only for realtors, chiropractors and presidents of the United States.~ H.L. Mencken

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The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake. ~H.L. Mencken

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It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money. ~ H.L. Mencken

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The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion’s ally, magic. It is impossible to imagine this world being really civilized so long as so much nonsense survives. In even its highest forms religion embraces concepts that run counter to all common sense. It can be defended only by making assumptions and adopting rules of logic that are never heard of in any other field of human thinking. ~H.L. Mencken

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Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense.”… “We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.”"The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us. ~Theodore Roosevelt

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A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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Right wing homophobes  are repulsed by the homosexual act simply because when they think about it they generally picture themselves doing it.  So, of course it makes them ill! Have you seen those people?  ~Quentin Crisp 

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Wouldn’t it be great if you could only get AIDS from giving money to television preachers?  ~Elayne Boosler