H. L. Mencken Quotes

Listen carefully to yourself. Listen to what you dislike, and you will find most of the imagery is what you have received and registered from other people. We ingest labels from others.

We delude ourselves into believing that morality comes from somewhere else, whereas in reality we behave as we've been told to behave.

We're all influenced by everything unless we're locked in an empty room.

Ethics is a fluid term ...It's the standards by which a civilized society lives.

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

Our prejudices are so deeply rooted that we never think of them as prejudices but call them common sense.

Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see.

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.

The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.

Laws are never as effective as habits.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

I think prejudice has gotten to a point where a lot of people hold biases in their mind and don't even realize that they're doing it, because it's deeply ingrained in the fabric of what it means to be an American.

Much legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres of life.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

All of us, more than we recognize, are products of the thinking around us. And much of this thinking is little, not big.

We've defined decency down now that we look at the entertainment value of it, whether the acting is good, the writing is good, the story is good, no matter the depravity, we'll watch it.

I think, so many times in society, women are expected to behave a certain way. You are raised to say 'sorry' and 'excuse me', and get out of the way.

These youngsters hold that all morality is relative but that middle class morality is just plain bad.

The public never knows what he wants, but he always wants what he knows.

Over the years, we have been conditioned that certain communities need to be looked upon in a certain typical way. So I think we need to question the logic behind it. 'Mulk' is going to question that logic - and where did it start and why did it start and the need to change it immediately.

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.

Decency cannot be discussed without indecency!