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Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility.

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
Absurd
Atheist
Atheism
Close
Religion
Comes
Imbecility

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The formula of the argument is simple and familiar: to dispose of a problem all that is necessary is to deny that it exists.
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The worshiper is the father of the gods.
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God must love the rich or he wouldn't divide so much among so few of them.
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Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
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No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation.
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The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.
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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.
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Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.
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The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.
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What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.
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There are two kinds of music German music and bad music.
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The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
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Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
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Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
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Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
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The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
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The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.
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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.
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Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
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