We're mortal

 

We're mortal - which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful - but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?
--
Ensign Flandry (1966)

 

Poul Anderson

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His Religion is not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed by being an easy religion." As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense, — sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler.

 

Thomas Carlyle

 

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

 

Bertrand Russell

 

Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil
The shadows that float o’er Eternity’s vale;
Nought waits for the good but a spirit of Love,
That will hail their blest advent to regions above.
For Love, Mortal, gleams through the gloom of my sway,
And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray.

 

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

"The president [Barack Obama] whose moral values would permit him to kill his unborn grandchildren if his daughters get pregnant by mistake... that same president has now issued a formal proclamation glorifying sodomite sin!... This evil man has proclaimed June as the month to be proud of abominable sins against God!... God then affixed the death penalty for doing what the LGBT fags do, fornicating day and night, and what Obama gratuitously said we must be proud of!... This jackass of a president ought to proclaim pride month for decency, abstinence and chastity, not for the most abominable sins known to mankind — in the estimation of God Almighty, that is. Obama will bring down the curses of God upon the whole creation. Remember, you ignorant Americans, you Obama-worshippers around the world, we warned you. He raises a false argument ordering that nobody discriminate against fags. Listen up, you Bible-ignorant moron! It is neither wrongful nor sinful to discriminate against sin!"

 

Fred Phelps

 

One's worth and self-regard ought to come from individual competitive performance, not from group identity. Pride based on clan or tribal connections is atavistic. It appeals to people who fear they cannot succeed as individuals, and by diverting their energies it all but ensures they will not succeed as individuals.

 

William A. Henry III