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The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

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
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Literary Critic
Satirist
Social Critic
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Henry Louis Mencken
Religion
Opinions
Social
Curious
Live
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Atheism
Effects
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Convention
Religious
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Age
Conventions

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Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a corporation director.
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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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Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven.
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The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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When you sympathize with a married woman you either make two enemies or gain one wife and one friend.
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When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
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Capital punishment has probably been responsible for a good deal of human progress. The overwhelming majority of those executed were of the sort whose departures for bliss eternal improved the average intelligence and decency of the race.
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The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
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The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
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I can't imagine a genuinely intelligent boy getting much out of college, even out of a good college, save it be a cynical habit of mind.
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Poetry is a comforting piece of fiction set to more or less lascivious music.
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Skin diseases are something doctors like, the patient neither dies nor gets well.
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Socialist: A man suffering from an overwhelming conviction to believe what is not true.
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Progress: The process whereby the human race has got rid of whiskers, the vermiform appendix and God.
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Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
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Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.
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The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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The editors are committed to nothing save this: to keep common sense as fast as they can, to belabor sham as agreeably as possible, to give civilized entertainment.
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Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
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