Morality is nothing but a struggle for safety
Interpretation
Morality stems from the desire to protect oneself and others, rather than being an inherent truth.
H. L. Mencken's quote suggests that what we often consider as moral standards and values are primarily motivated by a human instinct to ensure safety and security. Rather than viewing morality as a set of absolute principles, it can be seen as a social construct that evolves from the need to navigate interpersonal relationships in a way that minimizes harm and promotes well-being among individuals.
In practice
In a debate about ethical decision-making, this quote can highlight the underlying motivations behind moral choices.
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.
Karma means your have to live with the consequences of the actions you have taken in the past. Whatever you put out is coming back.
My benefactor told me that my father and mother had lived and died just to have me, and that their own parents had done the same for them. He said that warriors were different in that they shift their assemblage points enough to realize the tremendous price that has been paid for their lives. This shift gives them the respect and awe that their parents never felt for life in general, or for being alive in particular.
We are plain quiet folk, and I have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, and uncomfortable things.
In the end, the only events of my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world erupted into this transitory one All other memories of travels, people and my surroundings have paled beside these interior happenings But my encounters with the 'other' reality, my bouts with the unconscious, are indelibly engraved on my memory. In that realm there has always been wealth in abundance, and everything else has lost importance by comparison.
An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.
The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.
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