There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly.
Interpretation
Religious opinions should be viewed like any other opinion, deserving neither extra respect nor ridicule.
H. L. Mencken's quote critiques the special reverence often given to religious beliefs, suggesting that they do not inherently deserve more respect than any other opinion. He implies that such beliefs can sometimes be as irrational or silly as less serious opinions, inviting a more critical and equal treatment of all views.
In practice
In a debate about freedom of speech, one might use this quote to assert that all opinions, including religious ones, should be open to critique.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Life is very, very simple and easy to understand, but we complicate it with the beliefs and ideas that we create.
We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.
Extinction is the beginning of the path: it is traveling to God Most High. Guidance comes afterwards. What I mean by guidance is the guidance of God, as described by the Friend of God, Abraham: "Lo! I am going unto my Lord Who will guide me."
Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action. As long as you gotta sit-down philosophy, youβll have a sit-down thought pattern, and as long as you think that old sit-down thought youβll be in some kind of sit-down action.
Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.
We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselves - with its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely.
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