The whole point about corruption in politics is that it can’t be done, or done properly, without a bipartisan consensus.
The sad thing is that so many people, in the belief that the universe is organized to suit and influence them, are willing to sacrifice even the slight cranial capacity with which evolution has equipped us.
Bad as political fiction can be, there is always a politician prepared to make it look artistic by comparison.
Jefferson writes dismissively of slaves that “their griefs are transient.” American white supremacists to this day maintain that blacks are “mud people” because their lack of conscience prevents them from blushing – they are not capable of summoning “blood in the face,” as the.
I began the project of judging Mother Teresa’s reputation by her actions and words rather than her actions and words by her reputation.
I asked him if the thought of annihilation never gave him any uneasiness. He said not the least; no more than the thought that he had not been, as Lucretius observes.
It is supposed to be an axiom of “Western” civilization that the individual, or the truth, may not be sacrificed to hypothetical benefits such as “order.
Montaigne: “Religion’s surest foundation is the contempt for life.
In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
Religion is, after all, more than the belief in a supreme being. It is the cult of that supreme being and the belief that his or her wishes have been made known or can be determined.
The brief answer is that I have become inured without becoming indifferent.
I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.
If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.
I’m not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.
High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.
Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.
The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has – from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.
Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.
One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody – not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms – had the smallest idea what was going on.