A few days ago
Anonymous

What does this quote mean…?

The iconoclast proves enough when he proves by his blasphemy that this or that idol is defectively convincing–that at least one visitor to the shrine is left full of doubts. The liberation of the human mind has been best furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe–that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.

-H. L. Mencken

Top 2 Answers
A few days ago
suenami_98

Favorite Answer

In my opinion, it means essentially that H. L. Mencken was an atheist.

Nothing more.

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A few days ago
Spots^..^B4myeyes
An iconoclast is a person who destroys religious images or opposes their veneration.

A syllogism is a deductive scheme of a formal argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion (as in “every virtue is laudable; kindness is a virtue; therefore kindness is laudable”)

H.L. Mencken was a was a twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker.

He did not think much of organized religion or government.

Since people can happily swing dead cats into a church or on to an alter, and not get struck by lightening, the Deity in charge must be a fraud.

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