H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis Menckenwas a German-American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. As a scholar Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 September 1880
CountryUnited States of America
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
The only way to reconcile science and religion is to set up something which is not science and something that is not religion.
The worshiper is the father of the gods.
The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.
There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it.
A Puritan is someone who is desperately afraid that, somewhere, someone might be having a good time.
All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.
Christian--One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.
Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.
Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.