A Quote by H. L. Mencken
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.
Related Quotes
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.
America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.
Why should I crowd the world with my opinions? Live and let live. That's it. Let people have their own opinions, and you just keep yours to yourself. There are too many opinions - some unnecessary, some great, some ridiculously stupid - so I think I rather not say anything and keep my opinions to myself.
Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.
We have entered a new phase of culture - we may call it the Age of the Cinema - in which the most amazing perfection of scientific technique is being devoted to purely ephemeral objects, without any consideration of their ultimate justification. It seems as though a new society was arising which will acknowledge no hierarchy of values, no intellectual authority, and no social or religious tradition, but which will live for the moment in a chaos of pure sensation.
In order to teach a course in the history of Western religious thought, I had to do a great deal of research in the writings within the Judaic and Christian traditions and I was astonished to find in those writings philosophical thought of great power and sophistication. These writings completely blew away all my opinions about what I had taken to be the irrationality or immaturity of religious ideas, opinions which were and still are fashionable in many intellectual and literary circles today.
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
A convention is a social pattern we have chosen to prefer over whatever the raw world simply proffers. It is a sign of the operation of the mind, drawing the assent of a sufficient number of other minds so that the agreement will be widely operative. A convention is not a custom; a custom is a habit in which a sufficient number acquiesce. A custom can appear as a convention, but it is really a lesser act, the result of passive acceptance rather than of the imposition of design. It is the difference between learning to live by the annual flooding of the river or by a calendar.
We should foster a culture in which people's private religious beliefs, including atheists and agnostics, are respected.
Most Christmas carols have no obvious religious content, or at least that's noticeable to most people. I mean, it is almost by definition, a cultural phenomenon, all these songs, even though they point to this very religious holiday. They're not religious songs in effect anymore.
My definition of feminism is a social, political, economic system by which all genders are valued, respected, and can live dignified lives.
It was in that uncertain world that the European Convention on Human Rights was shaped. Written by Conservatives, it set out the principles which should lie behind a modern democratic state, where human rights were respected.
We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.
I like playing the social convention. If you're in a period drama, there's always something dancing underneath the surface as a human - but then you always have to conform to the social conventions around you, and those two things get to be juxtaposed against each other. You're being human, but you're trapped within the social convention of the time.
Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story ... Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case which deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unravelling it.'' —Sherlock Holmes on John Watson's "pamphlet", "A Study in Scarlet".
Painting is almost like a religious experience, which should go on and on. Age just gives you the freedom to do some things you've never done before. Great work can come at any stage of your life.
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