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.
We are all one - and if we don't know it, we will learn it the hard way.
Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.
Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor.
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