Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Christian - One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Poverty is a soft pedal upon the branches of human activity, not excepting the spiritual. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The only way to reconcile science and religion is to set up something which is not science and something that is not… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
What I got in Sunday school ... was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and… — 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
The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings comport themselves in crises, but how actors think… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries -… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion's ally,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be,… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences.… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
So few men are really worth knowing, that it seems a shameful waste to let an anthropoid prejudice stand in the way of free… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Man's objection to love is that it dies hard; woman's, that when it is dead, it stays dead. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
![“There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot. Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of brutes. They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub, who yearns to conquer the world, and has his eye especially upon Tennessee.]” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a0c/h-l-mencken-245_agents_there-is-it-appears-a-conspiracy-of-scie_2731885.jpg)
![“By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something…” quote by H. L. Mencken](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f46/h-l-mencken-245_absolutely-nothing_by-profession-a-biologist-thomas-henry-h_5368.jpg)
