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.
To hear two American men congratulating each other on being heterosexual is one of the most chilling experiences - and unique to the United States. You don't hear two Italians sitting around complimenting each other because they actually like to go to bed with women. The American is hysterical about his manhood.
Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.
I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do β mostly with my time.
One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.
All history is contemporary history.
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