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.
All life is a manifestation of the spirit, the manifestation of love.
From the very beginning, existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity.
The body is the instrument of our hold on the world.
These sociologists who talk to facilely about the sacred are like a man who keeps a toothless old circus lion around the house in order to experience the thrills of the jungle.
Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.
Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
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