“For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. The more… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“I am, indeed, against all proselyters, whether they be on my side or on some other side. What moves nine-tenths of them,… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Scientific Man and the Bible'. By… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“What Mencken most strongly objected to in religion was not the expression of nonsensical views—these could easily be combated by rebuttal from… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“The Fathers of the Republic, I believe, were far cleverer fellows than they are commonly represented to be, even in the schoolbooks.… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“In Mencken’s view, “religion belongs to a very early stage of human development, and... its rapid decay in the world since the… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“I am wholly devoid of public spirit or moral purpose. This is incomprehensible to many men, and they seek to remedy the… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“For the Bible, despite all its contradictions and absurdities, its barbarisms and obscenities, remains grand and gaudy stuff, and so it deserves… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“I dislike persons who change their basic ideas, and I dislike them when they change them for good reasons quite as much… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“Suffice it to say that the vile arts of the hussy prevailed over that noble and upright man—that she enticed him, by adroit appeals… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“I can't recall a single masculine figure created by a woman who is not, at bottom, a booby.” — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country he [Harry Truman] would have promised to provide them with free missionaries,… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“I have seen something of the horrors of war, and much too much of the worse horrors of peace.” — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“Don’t tell me. I have been there. No longer ago than last Tuesday—or was it last Monday?—I went into one of those big restaurants… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“ONE OF the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“But though every normal man thus cherishes the soothing unction that he is the intellectual superior of all women, and particularly of his wife,… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“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… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“The American moron’s mind simply does not run in that direction; he wants to keep his Ford, even at the cost of losing the… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“Once I ventured the guess that men worked in response to a vague inner urge for self-expression. But that was probably a shaky theory,… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered… — H.L. Mencken Copy Share Image
