QuoteProject
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought.
H. L. Mencken
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Faith can sometimes cloud rational thinking and clear judgment.

H. L. Mencken suggests that an individual who is entirely full of faith may overlook practical considerations and logical reasoning. This perspective implies a potential conflict between having unwavering faith and maintaining a realistic understanding of the world, indicating that blind faith can lead to a detachment from reality.

Themes

FaithThoughtRationalityRealismJudgment

In practice

Example use cases

Discussing the role of faith in personal decision-making during a debate.

More from H. L. Mencken

I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
H. L. MenckenRead
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
H. L. MenckenRead
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
H. L. MenckenRead
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
H. L. MenckenRead
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
H. L. MenckenRead
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
H. L. MenckenRead

Similar quotes

Any dispute in matters of taste usually results in a standoff.
Joseph BrodskyRead
Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.
Karl MarxRead
Death is not a foe, but an inevitable adventure.
Oliver LodgeRead
What is born will die, What has been gathered will be dispersed, What has been accumulated will be exhausted, What has been built up will collapse, And what has been high will be brought low.
Sogyal RinpocheRead
The outward work can never be small if the inward one is great, and the outward work can never be great or good if the inward is small or of little worth.
Meister EckhartRead
Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.
Flannery O'ConnorRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.