The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous.
Interpretation
Superstition should be confronted decisively, not politely ignored.
H. L. Mencken emphasizes the importance of addressing superstition directly and aggressively rather than treating it with politeness or tolerance. He advocates for challenging such unfounded beliefs to diminish their influence and ultimately render them absurd in the eyes of society.
In practice
During a speech on critical thinking, one might reference this quote to emphasize the need for rigorous scrutiny of irrational beliefs.
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.
Next time you're tempted to be upset, frustrated, offended, remind yourself, it's a part of that ten percent of things in life that you can't control - but you can control how you respond.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.
Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.
There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.
The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but... what we ought to avoid.
He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. (Shakespeare, Love's Labor's Lost, IV)
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