Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
Interpretation
Morality is about intrinsic values and principles, while religion often involves following external directives.
This quote by H. L. Mencken highlights the distinction between true morality and the dictates of religion. It suggests that morality is an inherent understanding of what is right, guided by personal conscience, whereas religion may sometimes lead individuals to act according to prescribed beliefs, even when those beliefs conflict with moral principles. Mencken's statement invites critical thinking about the sources of our ethical decisions and the potential conflicts between personal morals and organized religion.
In practice
In a debate about morality and ethics, one might use this quote to illustrate the difference between personal moral judgment and adherence to religious doctrine.
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.
Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands: through no merit of ours, but by his mercy, WE HAVE BEEN RESTORED to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of his beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of Grace
Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link.
Sitting is the gateway of truth to total liberation.
Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.
The road to the sacred leads through the secular.
Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.
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