People say we need religion when what they really mean is we need police.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the need for religion is often a masked desire for social order and control.
H. L. Mencken's quote reflects the idea that the call for religion in society may stem from a deeper necessity for governance and law enforcement rather than a genuine spiritual need. It suggests that while religion is often viewed as a moral compass, what might truly be required is a structure to maintain order and authority, as people may crave the security that comes from external regulation, akin to what police provide.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in public life, this quote can highlight the need for societal structures.
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.
I perceive a necessary gap between seeing and being. I would not be able to have said certain things if I had been under the obligation to unify the word and the deed. As it is I can let my words reach out and net impossible things - things that are impossible for me to do. And this is a way to pay the price for saying or seeing things.
All life is a movement in relationship. There is no living thing on earth which is not related to something or other.
In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society.
When God measures a man he puts the tape around the heart, not the head.
You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.
The machine will grind you down, but the machine is not bigger than the imagination. Rome fell in a day. We know this.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.