Famous Quotes & Sayings

H. L. Mencken

The so-called Philosophy of India is even more blowsy and senseless than the metaphysics of the West. It is at war with everything we know of the workings of the human mind, and with every sound idea formulated by mankind. If it prevailed in the whole modern world we'd still be in the Thirteenth Century; nay, we'd be back among the Egyptians of the pyramid age. Its only coherent contribution to Western thought has been theosophy-and theosophy is as idiotic as Christian Science. It has absolutely nothing to offer a civilized white man.

H. L. Mencken

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.

H. L. Mencken

Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian Businessman.

H. L. Mencken

Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable.

H. L. Mencken

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say that they will be realized later on. Thus, if we have another boom, they will argue that the collapse of capitalism is only postponed. The fact that the greatest booms ever heard of followed Marx's formal prophecy of the downfall of capitalism is already forgotten, just as millions have long since forgotten the early Christian prophecy that the end of the world was at hand. The first Christians accepted postponements as docilely as the Communists of today.

H. L. Mencken

Christian--One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.

H. L. Mencken

Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.

H. L. Mencken

At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgement of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.

H. L. Mencken

The Christian always swears a bloody oath that he will never do it again. The civilized man simply resolves to be a bit more careful next time.

H. L. Mencken

No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself. Thus a man's wife, however realistic her view of him, always flatters him in the end, for the worst she sees in him is appreciably better, by the time she sees it, than what is actually there.

H. L. Mencken

Christian endeavor is notoriously hard on female pulchritude.

H. L. Mencken

What I got in Sunday school ... was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian God preposterous.... The act of worship, as carried on by Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves groveling before a being who, if he really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of respected.

H. L. Mencken

On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the other side was sense.

H. L. Mencken

There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus arose from the dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any genuine scientists to say that he believes in the Resurrection, or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system.

H. L. Mencken

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.

Guglielmo Marconi

I am proud to be a Christian. I believe not only as a Christian, but as a scientist as well. A wireless device can deliver a message through the wilderness. In prayer the human spirit can send invisible waves to eternity, waves that achieve their goal in front of God.

Grace Paley

I lived in a house in the East Bronx, a totally Jewish neighborhood on East 172nd Street. You didn't see Christians much, although one lived next door. We thought they were kind of a minority.

J. Tillman

Christian music was music that I grew up listening to that I can't say has had much of an impact on anything I have done in my adult life. Maybe Christianity has, but certainly not the bullshit Christian music I was listening to when I was 12. To me there's not much substance in that music. I don't have a message or anything.

Grant Morrison

The 'medium' is unaware of its attractiveness, that's all. Everyone loves comics. I've proven this to my own satisfaction by handing them out to acountants, insurance brokers, hairdressers, mothers of children, black belts, pop stars, taxi drivers, painters, lesbians, doctors etc. etc. The X-Files, Buffy, the Matrix, X-Men - mainstream culture is not what it once was when science fiction and comics fans huddled in cellars like Gnostic Christians dodging the Romans. We should come up into the light soon before we suffocate.

Georg Buchner

There are only Epicureans, either crude or refined; Christ was the most refined.

Georg Brandes

Those [Christians] had left to love on earth were then: brothers and sisters in hatred, whom they called then: brothers and sisters in love.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

Gene Edwards

It is the Father's life, and the Father's life alone, that ever lives the Christian life. It is the Father's life, and Father's life alone, which will live the Christian life in you. Embrace a formula or a list in order to "live the Christian life," and you are doomed to frustration.

Gary Jennings

After the survivor of the Spanish conquest has told his life's story he is convicted by the Inquisition: He posted no brief in defense or mitigation of his offenses, and when he was most solemnly advised by the Court President of the dire consequences he faced if found guilty, Juan Damasceno volunteered only one comment: "It will mean I do not go to the Christian heaven?" He was told that that would indeed be the worst of his punishments: that he would most assuredly not go to Heaven. At which, his smile sent a thrill of horror through every soul of the Court.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The domestication (the culture) of man does not go deep--where it does go deep it at once becomes degeneration (type: the Christian). The 'savage' (or, in moral terms, the evil man) is a return to nature--and in a certain sense his recovery, his cure from 'culture'.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity is religion for the executioner.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Principle of "Christian love": it insists upon being well paid in the end.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of today - burning us.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The last Christian died on a cross.

Jessica Simpson

Ah swear, ah will croak if she asks me for a pair of Nikes instead of Christian Louboutins!

Jerry B. Jenkins

We at the Christian Writers Guild couldn't be more proud of Brandy Vallance. Let her debut novel transport you to an entirely fresh time and place where you'll soon forget you're turning pages and find yourself riveted to the destinies of characters who'll leave a lasting impression on your heart.

Jerry B. Jenkins

I was raised in a Christian home and, in fact, my mother led me to Christ as a youngster.

Jerry B. Jenkins

Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship with God through Christ.