"It's a big question. Getting rid of religion would be a good start, wouldn't it? It seems to be causing a lot of havoc."
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When asked "Given the chance, how would you change the world?" (Independent, 18 March 2005.)Bjork Guomundsdottir
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If we recognize, following the materialist theories, that only the physical nature exist, and that man contain ("renferme", Fr.) no higher essence, divine, which, by one side of his being, raise (promote or improve...) him above his animal nature, it would be a question ("il ne saurait ?tre question", Fr.) neither of obligation, nor of moral responsability; then the supreme good would consist for him, indeed, to satisfy his appetites and his natural inclinations (fondness or partiality, -"penchant", Fr.), to look for the pleasure and flee from (scud, shun, avoid, -"fuir", Fr.) pain. In this case, there could be neither religion nor moral, since religion is precisely what raise man above vulgar (or common, - "vulgaire", Fr.) reality, and that moral is the very negation of selfishness.
African Spir
The question, "How well does one read?" is a bad question... essentially unanswerable. A more proper question is "How well does one read poetry, or history, or science, or religion?" No one I have ever known is so brilliant as to have learned the languages of all fields of knowledge equally well. Most of us do not learn some of them at all.
Neil Postman
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.
Martin Luther King
"We are willing to worship a God only if God makes us safe. Thus you get the silly question, How does a good God let bad things happen to good people? Of course, it was a rabbi who raised that question, but Christians took it up as their own. Have you read the Psalms lately? We're seeing a much more complex God than that question gives credit for."
Stanley Hauerwas
The whole world is in some ways better than it's ever been in the past. And, indeed, I think for many people the meaning of their lives really depends on that belief. If you strip out that belief in progress, if you start thinking of the world in the way in which the ancient pre-Christian Europeans did, or the Buddhists and the Hindus or the Taoists of China do, many people think that's a kind of despair. I don't know how many times I've been told "If I thought that, John, I wouldn't get up in the morning" and "If I agreed with you, John, that history had no pattern of that kind, I wouldn't get up in the morning." I said, "Well, stay in bed a bit longer, you might find a better reason for getting up."
John N. Gray
Guomundsdottir, Bjork
Gupta, Sanjay
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