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I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

H. L. Mencken

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H. L. Mencken
Age: 75 †
Born: 1880
Born: September 12
Died: 1956
Died: January 29
Autobiographer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Linguist
Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Clear
Overcoming
Agnosticism
Religion
Speaking
Greatly
Generally
Services
Done
Atheism
Modest
Believe
Mankind
Ethical
Thinking
Side
Damage
Honest
Curse
Overestimated
Sides
Overcome
Belive

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
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Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
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No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.
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A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
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As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.
H. L. Mencken
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Watching two women kiss is like watching two prizefighters shake hands.
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The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.
H. L. Mencken
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Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
H. L. Mencken
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He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.
H. L. Mencken
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The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
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The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.
H. L. Mencken
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After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H. L. Mencken
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A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula.
H. L. Mencken
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The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly.
H. L. Mencken
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The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
H. L. Mencken
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I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish.
H. L. Mencken
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It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.
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A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.
H. L. Mencken
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Whenever A attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon B, A is most likely a scoundrel.
H. L. Mencken