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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
Done
Generally
Services
Believe
Atheism
Modest
Thinking
Mankind
Ethical
Side
Damage
Honest
Curse
Overestimated
Sides
Overcome
Belive
Clear
Overcoming
Agnosticism
Religion
Speaking
Greatly

More quotes by H. L. Mencken

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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.
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Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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Unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency should be quietly hanged as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.
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Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.
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The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
H. L. Mencken
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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
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A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.
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There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats.
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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
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Youth, though it may lack knowledge, is certainly not devoid of intelligence it sees through shams with sharp and terrible eyes.
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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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We have had more brilliant Presidents than Cleveland, and one or two who were considerably more profound, but we have never had one, at least since Washington, whose fundamental character was solider and more admirable.
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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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
H. L. Mencken
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I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.
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The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
H. L. Mencken
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Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel.
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They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.
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Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.
H. L. Mencken