Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it. - H. L. Mencken

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Of all the religions ever devised by the great practical jokers of the race, [Christianity] is the one that offers most for the least money, so to speak, to the inferior man. It starts out by denying his inferiority in plain terms: all men are equal in the sight of God. It ends by erecting that inferiority into a sort of actual superiority: it is a merit to be stupid, and miserable, and sorely put upon—of such are the celestial elect. Not all the eloquence of a million Nietzsches, nor all the painful marshalling of evidence of a million Darwins and Harnacks, will ever empty that great consolation of its allure. The most they can ever accomplish is to make the superior orders of men acutely conscious of the exact nature of it, and so give them armament against the contagion.

In Mencken’s view, “religion belongs to a very early stage of human development, and... its rapid decay in the world since the Reformation is evidence of genuine progress” (“The Ascent of Man”).