Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
Interpretation
Morality is about intrinsic values and principles, while religion often involves following external directives.
This quote by H. L. Mencken highlights the distinction between true morality and the dictates of religion. It suggests that morality is an inherent understanding of what is right, guided by personal conscience, whereas religion may sometimes lead individuals to act according to prescribed beliefs, even when those beliefs conflict with moral principles. Mencken's statement invites critical thinking about the sources of our ethical decisions and the potential conflicts between personal morals and organized religion.
In practice
In a debate about morality and ethics, one might use this quote to illustrate the difference between personal moral judgment and adherence to religious doctrine.
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.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
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.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
. . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy--of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.
I've always had a compassion for characters in novels - the sense that they are, whatever they might think, living in a world that has a shape they don't know and can't finally alter.
I went to see the Beatles last month... And I heard 20,000 girls screaming together at the Beatles... and I couldn't hear what they were screaming, either... But you don't have to... They're screaming Me! Me! Me! Me!... I'm Me!... That's the cry of the ego, and that's the cry of this rally!... Me! Me! Me! Me!... And that's why wars get fought... ego... because enough people want to scream Pay attention to Me... Yep, you're playing their game.
What use would wings be to a man bound in iron fetters? They would only drive him to even greater despair.
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
My main ambition as a historian is to figure out what's really happening in the world, instead of the fictions that humans have been creating for thousands of years in order to explain or control what's happening in the world.
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