H. L. Mencken Quotes About Morality

• Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

  H. L. Mencken

  Motivational, Religion, Atheism

• Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.

  H. L. Mencken

  Inspirational, Men, Progress

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.416, Knopf

• Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Character, Men, Honor

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.111, Vintage

• There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character.

  H. L. Mencken

  Character, Civilization, Religion

• Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

  H. L. Mencken

  Sad, Motherhood, Religion

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

• Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hands, Play, Toys

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.281, Vintage

• The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who on the grounds of decorum and morality avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Games, Ease

  H.L. Mencken (1920). “Prejudices Second Series”

• Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hygiene, Medicine, Morality

  Prejudices Types of Men

• There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religion, Liberty, Morality

  "A little book in C major".

• The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

  H. L. Mencken

  Regret, Character, Men

  Prejudices, Fourth Series ch. 11 (1924)

• Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Crazy, Silly

  A Book of Burlesques ch. 11 (1920)

• To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.

  H. L. Mencken

  Hands, Morality, Judgment

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

• What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor

  H. L. Mencken

  Punishment, May, Morality

• Morality is nothing but a struggle for safety

  H. L. Mencken

  Struggle, Safety, Morality

• It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning , witchcraft and sacerdotalism.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Race, Years

  H. L. Mencken (2003). “The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche”, p.57, See Sharp Press

• Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienist who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous. ... The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard them from the consequences of their vices.

  H. L. Mencken

  Science, Men, Hygiene

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.269, Cosimo, Inc.

• The double standard of morality will survive in this world so long as the woman whose husband has been lured away is favoured with the sympathetic tears of other women, and a man whose wife has made off is laughed at by other men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Husband, Men, Wife

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