H. L. Mencken Quotes - Page 15

• The book of Genesis, a farrago of nonsense so wholly absurd that even Sunday-school scholars have to be threatened with Hell to make them accept it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, School, Sunday

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.202, Vintage

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• Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."

  H. L. Mencken

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

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• If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Average, Made

  "In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality".

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• What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.

  H. L. Mencken

  Answers, World, Idiot

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.180, Knopf

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• The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Thinking, Average

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.20, Knopf

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• It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning , witchcraft and sacerdotalism.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Race, Years

  H. L. Mencken (2003). “The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.57, See Sharp Press

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• It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Men, Political

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.371, Knopf

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• The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Prayer, Attitude

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.312, Knopf

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• Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States--first,murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; thirdly, volumes on spiritualism, occultism and other such claptrap, and fourthly, books on Lincoln.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Hero, Four

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.221, Vintage

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• The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Religion, Occupation

  Prejudices (1926).

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• A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Self, Rome

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• We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Respect, Religious

  Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

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• There is always a sheet of paper. There is always a pen. There is always a way out.

  H. L. Mencken

  Paper, Way, Sheets

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.29, Knopf

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• The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religion, Atheism, Proof

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.311, Knopf

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• The theory behind representative government is that superior men-or at least men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity-are chosen to manage the public business, and that they carry on this work with reasonable intelligence and honest. There is little support for that theory in known facts.

  H. L. Mencken

  Integrity, Men, Average

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• If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

  H. L. Mencken

  Democracy, Politics, Honest

  H.L. MENCKEN (1958). “PREJUDICES A SELECTION”

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• The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.

  H. L. Mencken

  Theatre, Done, Said

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

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• Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Democracy, Herds

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• A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.

  H. L. Mencken

  Passion, Humor, Patriotic

  "H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series".

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• If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Coward, Doe

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.124, Cosimo, Inc.

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• When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Atheist, Believe, Forever

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• Remorse - Regret that one waited so long to do it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Regret, Long

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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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 and necessary to the common weal, has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse when illness or age makes him idle.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, Men, Practice

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• Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn't believe he is dead

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Men, Immortality

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Artist, Trying, Incompetence

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.564, Vintage

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