H. L. Mencken

[Hogeye]

One of my favorite freethinkers is HL Mencken. Maybe we should add him to the list of famous freethinkers on our home page. Here are some quotes:


"What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world?
Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them
from an imaginary hell. It is a business almost indistinguishable from
that of a seller of snake-oil for rheumatism."

"The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake."

"The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given
idea, however fundamental it may seem to be, for a better one; the
essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and
immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the
progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of
Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the
Thirteenth Century, but this yielding is always done grudgingly, and
thus lingers a good while behind the event. So far as I am aware even
the most liberal theologian of today still gags at scientific concepts
that were already commonplaces in my schooldays."

“Wars are seldom caused by spontaneous hatreds between peoples, for peoples in general are too ignorant of one another to have grievances and too indifferent to what goes on beyond their borders to plan conquests.  They must be urged to slaughter by politicians who know how to alarm them.”  [“Its State Today,” Treatise on Right and Wrong, 1934]

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

“I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years.  I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe.  I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value.  I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.”  [“Why Liberty?”, Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1927]

“Soon or late the money to pay the State’s mounting bills will have to be found, and there is only one place to look for it.  That is in the pockets of persons who earn the communal income by doing some sort of useful work.  Politicians never earn it, and neither do the uplifters.  It must always come, in the last analysis, from men who go to work in the morning and labor hard all day.”  [“More and More Taxes,” Baltimore Evening Sun, April 19, 1937]

“When…[government] gets into difficulties it can raise money by seizing it, in the form of taxes, from those who have earned it.  So long as such persons confine their resistance to academic protests, it will continue well-heeled, and ready for ever new and worse extravagances.  Even when it finds, on trying to shake them down, that their pockets are quite empty, it can still borrow on the security of their future earning power.  Legally speaking they are its slaves.  It can dip into their bank account whenever it pleases, and if those bank accounts turn out to be too scanty for its needs, it can mortgage whatever money they seem likely to accumulate tomorrow, or next month, or next year…It is a millstone around their necks that grows heavier every time they try to throw it off.”  [“A Third of a Century,” Baltimore Evening Sun, January 11, 1932]

“The storm center of lawlessness in every American State is the State Capitol.  It is there that the worst crimes are committed; it is there that lawbreaking attains to the estate and dignity of a learned profession; it is there that contempt for the laws is engendered, fostered and spread broadcast.”  [“On Lawlessness,” Baltimore Evening Sun, October 20, 1910]

“I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.  But that is certainly not the common American view; the majority of Americans are far more hopeful.  When they see an evil they try to remedy it – by peaceful means, if possible, and if not, then by force.”  [“The Coolidge Buncombe,” Baltimore Evening Sun, October 6, 1924]

[Dardedar]

One of my favorite freethinkers is HL Mencken. Maybe we should add him to the list of famous freethinkers on our home page.

DAR
He was a good guy. Mencken IS on our large 6' x 3' "Famous Freethinkers Who Changed the World" poster board.