Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Many people with different backgrounds, cultures, languages, and creeds combine to make a nation. But that nation is greater than the sum total of the individual skills and talents of its people. Something more grows out of their unity than can be calculated by adding the assets of individual contributions. That intangible additional quantity is often due to the differences which make the texture of the nation rich. Therefore, we must never wipe out or deride the differences amongst us-for where there is no difference, there is only indifference.
Instead of loving a God, we love each other. Instead of the religion of the sky-the religion of this world-the religion of the family-the love of husband for wife, of wife for husband-the love of all for children. So that now the real religion is: Let us live for each other; let us live for this world without regard for the past and without fear for the future. Let us use our faculties and our powers for the benefit of ourselves and others, knowing that if there be another world, the same philosophy that gives us joy here will make us happy there.
It's perfectly OK that there are certain people who do not accept Islam at all. Therefore, to announce that I am a Muslim can rub some people the wrong way. But my aim is to show that those governments that violate the rights of people by invoking the name of Islam have been misusing Islam. They violate these rights and then seek refuge behind the argument that Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy. But this is basically to save face. In fact, I'm promoting democracy. And I'm saying that Islam is not an excuse for thwarting democracy.
You don't know the things in your childhood that influence you. You can't possibly know them. People today try to analyze the early environment and the reasons for something that happened, but if you look at children of the same family -- children who have identical parents, go to identical schools, have an almost identical upbringing, and yet who have totally different experiences and neuroses -- you realize that what influences the children is not so much the obvious externals as their emotional experiences. Of course any psychiatrist knows that.
I think that the thing that holds so many of us back is our fear that we might fail, and I think we lose an incredible amount of talent and energy and enthusiasm that way. So I think, since I'm kind of a shining example of losing, that it's important for me to show that it's OK to lose, that I'm still so happy that I entered the fight, that I fought for something that mattered to me and that I gave voice to it and I made it part of the conversation. I want young women to know that it is OK to fail - it's not OK to stay home. It's not OK to not try.
I think the regime in North Korea is more fragile than people think. The country's economic system remains desperate, and one thing that could happen for example would be under a new government in South Korea, to get the South Korean government to live up to its own constitution, which says any Korean who makes it to South Korea, is a Korean citizen. A citizen of the Republic of Korea. And you could imagine the impact that would have inside North Korea if people thought, "If I could get out and make it to South Korea, I could have a different life."
It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or worship, or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in abhorrence and contempt... In the New Testament, death is not the end, but the beginning of punishment that has no end. In the New Testament the malice of God is infinite and the hunger of his revenge eternal... This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the implacable enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor.
The earth's becoming at a particular period the residence of human beings, was an era in the moral, not in the physical world, that our study and contemplation of the earth, and the laws which govern its animate productions, ought no more to be considered in the light of a disturbance or deviation from the system, than the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter should be regarded as a physical event in the history of those heavenly bodies, however influential they may have become from that time in advancing the progress of sound philosophy among men.
If upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven,it is when we pass a home in winter, at night,and through the windows, the curtains drawn aside,we see the family about the pleasant hearth; the old lady knitting; the cat playing with the yarn;the children wishing they had as many dolls or dollars or knivesor somethings, as there are sparks going out to join the roaring blast;the father reading and smoking, and the clouds rising like incense from the altar of domestic joy.I never passed such a house without feeling thatI had received a benediction.
Why should not the knowledge, the skill, the expertness, the assiduity, and the spirited hazards of trade and commerce, when crowned with success, be entitled to give those flattering distinctions by which mankind are so universally captivated? Such are the specious, but false arguments for a proposition which always will find numerous advocates, in a nation where men are every day starting up from obscurity to wealth. To refute them is needless. The general sense of mankind cries out, with irresistible force, "Un gentilhomme est toujours gentilhomme.
Many writers claim that nearly all crime is caused by economic conditions, or in other words that poverty is practically the whole cause of crime. Endless statistics have been gathered on this subject which seem to show conclusively that property crimes are largely the result of the unequal distribution of wealth. But crime of any class cannot be safely ascribed to a single cause. Life is too complex, heredity is too variant and imperfect, too many separate things contribute to human behavior, to make it possible to trace all actions to a single cause.
Great lecturers seldom hesitate to use dramatic tricks to enshrine their precepts in the minds of their audiences, and at Yale perhaps Chauncey B. Tinker was the most noted. To read one of his lectures was like reading a monologue of the great actress Ruth Draper--you missed the main point. You missed the drop in his voice as he approached the death in Rome of the tubercular Keats; you missed the shaking tone in which he described the poet's agony for the absent Fanny with him his love had never been consummated; you missed the grim silence of the end.
Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa... Whilst we were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty... whilst we swore irreconcilable hostility to her enemies... whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free or die... we were imposing on our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions, of which we complained.
Civil rights, as we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property. In a state of slavery, the two last are wholly abolished, the person of the slave being at the absolute disposal of his master; and property, what he is incapable, in that state, either of acquiring, or holding, in his own use. Hence, it will appear how perfectly irreconcilable a state of slavery is to the principles of a democracy, which form the basis and foundation of our government.
Black people in America have to, for their own protection, develop a defense mechanism, and I just grew terribly tired of it. When you sustain that kind of affront, and sustain it and sustain it and sustain it, something happens to you. You try to steer a course in American society that's not self-destructive. But America is a country that inflicts injury. It does not like to see anything that comes in response, and accuses one of anger as if it were an unnatural response. For anyone who is not white in America, the affronts are virtually across the board.
When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.
Something is very, very wrong with American culture. The signs are everywhere. I think the country is in almost terminal descent. The business class is combined with the evangelicals. And I think the evangelicals want to provoke an immense global disaster to precipitate the second coming of Christ. So they are very happy about what we're doing to Iraq - and the menace we present now for Syria and for Iran - because they think that the apocalypse is an important thing to get into so that they can see vindicated their most literal interpretation of the Bible.
The world in which we live would benefit greatly if men and women everywhere would exercise the pure love of Christ, which is kind, meek, and lowly. It is without envy or pride. It is selfless because it seeks nothing in return. It does not countenance evil or ill will, nor rejoice in iniquity; it has no place for bigotry, hatred, or violence. It refuses to condone ridicule, vulgarity, abuse, or ostracism. It encourages diverse people to live together in Christian love regardless of religious belief, race, nationality, financial standing, education, or culture.
All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all that were new art foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: "Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men." He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: "The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband." He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: "Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence.
There is no independence of law against National Socialism. Say to yourselves at every decision which you make: "How would the Führer decide in my place?" In every decision ask yourselves: "Is this decision compatible with the National Socialist conscience of the German people?" Then you will have a firm iron foundation which, allied with the unity of the National Socialist People's State and with your recognition of the eternal nature of the will of Adolf Hitler, will endow your own sphere of decision with the authority of the Third Reich, and this for all time.
Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume. So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each religion, the same arguments would be urged.
Consequently, citizen legislators, rotating back to their communities after a short period of public service—considered an indispensable and routine characteristic and design of representative government at the time of the founding, and for a century thereafter—have been replaced with a professional ruling class led by governing masterminds. For the most part, they are isolated from the communities from which they hail and are consumed with the daily jockeying for position and power within their ranks. Moreover, they both pander to and lord over their constituents.
There is no "true Islam," just different interpretations. Since I brought up patriarchy, let me make one thing clear. I am not singling out men; I am addressing the issue of inequality of genders. A patriarchy does not only not accept the equality of the sexes, it also has a hard time understanding the principles of democracy and its essence. Women are the victims of this patriarchal culture, but they are also its carriers. Let us keep in mind that every oppressive man was raised in the confines of his mother's home. This is the culture we need to resist and fight.
Gentlemen, do you know what is the finest speech that I ever in my life heard or read? It is the address of Garibaldi to his Roman soldiers, when he told them: "Soldier, what I have to offer you is fatigue, danger, struggle and death; the chill of the cold night in the free air, and heat under the burning sun; no lodgings, no munitions, no provisions, but forced marches, dangerous watchposts and the continual struggle with the bayonet against batteries;- - those who love freedom and their country may follow me." That is the most glorious speech I ever heard in my life.
If cathedrals had been universities If dungeons of the Inquisition had been laboratories If Christians had believed in character instead of creed If they had taken from the bible only that which is GOOD and thrown away the wicked and absurd If temple domes had been observatories If priests had been philosophers If missionaries had taught useful arts instead of bible lore If astrology had been astronomy If the black arts had been chemistry If superstition had been science If religion had been humanity The world then would be a heaven filled with love, and liberty and joy
Every church pretends to have found the exact truth. This is the end of progress. Why pursue that which you have? Why investigate when you know? Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, "Halt!" A creed is the ignorant Past bullying the enlightened Present. The ignorant are not satisfied with what can be demonstrated. Science is too slow for them, and so they invent creeds. They demand completeness. A sublime segment, a grand fragment, are of no value to them. They demand the complete circle... the entire structure.
There was only really one time that I had a substantive interaction with the president [Barak Obama] directly, and that was in 2013 when we were deciding whether to file a brief in the first gay marriage case, the Perry against Hollingsworth case. That was a weighty decision about whether the United States government was going to come in and say that heightened scrutiny ought to apply and some state bans on same-sex marriage ought to be unconstitutional. And that was the one time in my tenure where I thought I ought not make this decision without talking to the president.
I'm not saying that you need a State Department that looks like the litigation department of a major law firm. But you need people who are not afraid to make the case for the United States, who are not afraid to stand their ground, not afraid to be isolated in international organizations when that's the correct approach for our diplomacy. This is a cultural change that has to be effected through incentive systems, promotion systems, career training systems. This is not something that you can do with the stroke of a magic wand, it's going to take years to make this change.
The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either form human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
Imagine that for hundreds of years your most formative traumas, your daily suffering and pain, the abuse you live through, the terror you live with, are unspeakable - not the basis of literature. You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs.... You learn how to leave your body and create someone else who takes over when you cannot stand it any more. You develop a self who is ingratiating and obsequious and imitative and aggressively passive and silent - you learn, in a word, femininity.
I typically don't use the distinction 'positive' and 'negative' liberty, because negative sounds bad and positive sounds good, and I don't think that the terminology ought to prejudice us one way or the other. So I think the more descriptive term is 'liberty rights' versus 'welfare rights'. So, liberty rights are freedom-of-action type rights, and welfare rights are rights-to-stuff, of various kinds...And, property rights are not rights-to-stuff. I think that's one of the key misunderstandings about property. Property rights are the rights to liberty within your jurisdiction.
The plea agreement negotiated by Janet Reno's Justice Department with Nora, Gene and Trisha Lum is a hoax. It allows two key players in the campaign finance scandal to plead to lesser offenses and effectively concludes a serious investigation that, if taken to a conclusion, could have seriously affected the Clinton Administration's claim that it committed no illegalities in the campaign finance scandal. Nora Lum was a close confidant of Ron Brown and remains close to John Huang. Trisha Lum, her daughter, worked for Brown at the Commerce Department and worked on trade missions.
Addison writes with the ease of a gentleman. His readers fancy that a wise and accomplished companion is talking to them; so thathe insinuates his sentiments and taste into their minds by an imperceptible influence. Johnson writes like a teacher. He dictates to his readers as if from an academical chair. They attend with awe and admiration; and his precepts are impressed upon them by his commanding eloquence. Addison's style, like a light wine, pleases everybody from the first. Johnson's, like a liquor of more body, seems too strong at first, but, by degrees, is highly relished.
All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy - making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.
The scarcest resource these days is reason. What's certainly striking about American culture today is the great hostility toward science and the decline of respect for rational scientific thinking. People seem to think that we are ruled by the scientific method and that we overvalue reason. If there was ever a period when we overvalued reason, I think that it was probably extremely brief. What I see now is a great deal of superstition, as much superstition as there has ever been. There are probably more people who believe in guardian angels than who understand the law of gravity.
Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen and heads-men — and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities have committed far more crimes than they have prevented.... Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime. As long as dishonorable success outranks honest effort — as long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails.
I was told 20% of the kids in Kosovo didn't know where their parents were. This is a dreadful problem. A woman that I was with, a doctor, had seen her house destroyed and her uncle, who was a professor, taken out and shot. She's there, anxious now, trying to build relations with the Serbs, and said that she was trying to do this, but she was underlying how difficult it is with these images in your mind. And I think that is what has caused this terrible bloodshed that occurred just days ago in relation to the Serbs that were shot. I think that there is a need for a period of healing.
Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers... every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child - every solitary one was a Democrat.
A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the Bible; so that, if the God of Nature did not write the Bible, this God at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this God has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question - not as to whether the Bible is inspired and not as to whether Jehovah is the real God, but whether there is a God or not.
Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest.... But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the "truths" of myths and parables over empiricism.) In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.
After years spent trying to deal with the effects of COINTELPRO, my rage at the FBI's almost unimaginable evil remains undiminished because I believe that it succeeded in many of its horrifying goals, given the deaths of Martin King, Malcolm X, and other sixties leaders. Since the FBI uses taxpayer dollars to fund its extreme and ridiculous investigations of anyone who expresses dissenting opinions, even resorting to crime - including theft, encouragement to murder, subornation of perjury, and manipulation of the judicial process - to achieve its ends, I have always advocated its disbanding.
I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.
Where utopianism is advanced through gradualism rather than revolution, albeit steady and persistent as in democratic societies, it can deceive and disarm an unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as reforming and improving the existing society's imperfections and weaknesses without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by some. Transformation is deemed innocuous, well-intentioned, and perhaps constructive but not a dangerous trespass on fundamental liberties.
All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention - of barbarian invention - is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition - then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity.
The mandate entails a generous synthesis of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The title requires the expert to be truly independent, keep an open mind, conduct his/her research objectively and without ideological prejudices, listen to all sides of an argument and seek the opinion of all stakeholders. The essence of an independent expert is not merely his/her expertise - which must be considered a given - but the faculty of thinking outside the box, while rigorously respecting the terms of reference laid down in the resolution establishing the mandate, and observing the code of conduct of rapporteurs.