Religion is a conceited effort to deny the most obvious realities.
Interpretation
The quote critiques religion as a way to ignore clear truths in life.
H. L. Mencken suggests that religion often serves as a hubristic attempt by individuals to reject or overlook evident truths and realities that should be acknowledged. This perspective challenges the validity of religious beliefs by framing them as self-important mechanisms that distract from fundamental understandings of existence and human experience.
In practice
In a discussion about belief systems and their impact on society.
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.
It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgments about each other that do.
Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new-create another heir As great in admiration as herself.
One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.
We must reason in natural philosophy not from what we hope, or even expect, but from what we perceive.
Extremism. It is an almost infallible sign β a kind of death-rattle β when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them.
God hath work to do in this world; and to desert it because of its difficulties and entanglements, is to cast off His authority. It is not enough that we be just, that we be righteous, and walk with God in holiness; but we must also serve our generation, as David did before he fell asleep. God hath a work to do; and not to help Him is to oppose Him.
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