H. L. Mencken Quotes

What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions!

I think most people are more susceptible to prejudice than to reason.

Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds.

Of all the bigotries that ravage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. It has no basis in reason, it is not rooted in faith, it aspires to no ideal.

A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements.

I feel like people are so closed-minded at times.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance.

Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.

Bigotry is chronic dogmatism.

Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice.

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.

You know, people aren't always the most open-minded.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

I just think that most of the people are very close minded.

An intellectual hatred is the worst.

The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.

Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons - but they're not out there.

Racism is a sign of ignorance, in my opinion. It's people who haven't been anywhere, haven't seen the world.

There is nothing that dies so hard and rallies so often as intolerance.

Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse.

The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it.

If prejudice could reason, it would dispel itself.