H. L. Mencken Quotes About Opinions

• The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Religion, Atheism

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.80, Vintage

• Suicide is a belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives.

  H. L. Mencken

  Suicide, Wife, Acquiescence

  A Little Book in C Major ch. 5 (1916)

• The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision and improvement.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, War, Men

• Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavoured and colored and put into cans.

  H. L. Mencken

  Public Opinion, Factories, States

  "Notes on Democracy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1926.

• Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

  H. L. Mencken

  Love, Opinion, Impossible

• One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty.

  H. L. Mencken

  Business, Believe, Law

  "Liberty and Democracy". Baltimore Evening Sun (April 13, 1925) as quoted in "A Second Mencken Chrestomathy: A New Selection from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit" edited by Terry Teachout (p. 35), 1994.

• There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Silly, Others Opinions

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.80, Vintage

• The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes the worst cigars.

  H. L. Mencken

  Opinion, Cigar, Worst

• The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone. All it accomplishes is (a) to throw a veil of sanctity about ideas that violate every intellectual decency, and (b) to make every theologian a sort of chartered libertine. No doubt it is mainly to blame for the appalling slowness with which really sound notions make their way in the world.

  H. L. Mencken

  Religious, Ideas, Evil

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.80, Vintage

• I am never much interested in the effects of what I write....I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my...books. Two times out of three I know something about the reviewer, and in very few cases have I any respect for his judgments. Thus his praise, if he praises me, leaves me unmoved. I can't recall any review that has even influenced me in the slightest. I live in sort of a vacuum, and I suspect that most other writers do, too. It is hard to imagine one of the great ones paying any serious attention to contemporary opinion.

  H. L. Mencken

  Book, Writing, Two

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