“Though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity continued to enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more acceptance than ever before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, that they simply must be saved from the wreck—that the world would vanish into chaos if they went the way of the revelations supporting them. In this fear a great many judicious men joined, and so there arose what was, in essence, an absolutely new Christian cult—a cult, to wit, purged of all the supernaturalism superimposed upon the older cult by generations of theologians, and harking back to what was conceived to be the pure ethical doctrine of Jesus.”
1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist
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H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes

Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865)

“Of Christian souls more have been wrecked on shore
Than ever were lost at sea.”
With a Nantucket Shell, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), Chapter IV: The Work of the Christ Today and in the Future, p. 63

Source: 1850s, Practice in Christianity (September 1850), p. 61-62
Context: In all the flat, lethargic, dull moments, when the sensate dominates a person, to him Christianity is a madness because it is incommensurate with any finite wherefore. But then what good is it? Answer: Be quiet, it is the absolute. And that is how it must be presented, consequently as, that is, it must appear as madness to the sensate person. And therefore it is true, so true, and also in another sense so true when the sensible person in the situation of contemporaneity (see II A) censoriously says of Christ, “He is literally nothing”-quite so, for he is the absolute. Christianity is an absolute. Christianity came into the world as the absolute, not, humanly speaking, for comfort; on the contrary, it continually speaks about how the Christian must suffer or about how a person in order to become and remain a Christian must endure sufferings that he consequently can avoid simply by refraining from becoming a Christian.

Source: Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible

Message of "The Visitor" Ch. 19
The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980)

Source: 14 December 1941, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944