"Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of……" — H. L. Mencken

"Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible."

— H. L. Mencken

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647 Quotes by H. L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken has 647 quotes on this site. A few more worth reading:

A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought.
Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.
When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever…
People say we need religion when what they really mean is we need police.
Everyman is thoroughly happy twice in his life, just after he has met his first love, and just after he…
Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God…
The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is, indeed, no more…
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.
To every complex question there is a simple answer and it is wrong...
The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is…
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services…
Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those…

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More Belief Quotes

This quote is filed under Belief Quotes, one of 5,318 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger. — Richard Bach
And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief… — Isaac Asimov
Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. — Margaret Atwood
I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.' It's that you cannot present as… — Margaret Atwood
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were… — Wystan Hugh Auden
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of… — Wystan Hugh Auden
If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel… — Saint Augustine
Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. — Saint Augustine
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. — Marcus Aurelius
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be,… — Jane Austen
Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what… — Richard Bach
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the… — Richard Bach

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