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** STICKY ** Post any notable quotes you can find here.

arg-fallbackName="Laurens"/>
"I think that by retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and--to return to my first instance--toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship. "

- George Orwell
 
arg-fallbackName="Inferno"/>
Dr. House about a guy with a doll fetish: "The guy loves an imaginary being that's never going to respond to him. That's no crazier than millions of church-goers."
 
arg-fallbackName="theyounghistorian77"/>
"The world of the death camps and the society it engenders reveals the progressively intensifying night side of Judeo-Christian civilization. Civilization means slavery, wars, exploitation and death camps. It also means medical hygiene, elevated religious ideas, beautiful art and exquisite music." - Richard Rubenstein, "The Cunning of History", p91.

Reading Dotoree's posts has made me think about this quote and me possibly deploying it everytime someone like him makes the absurd argument that Christians can only "do good" despite said Christians having a long record of appaling acts (the Inquisition being one example)
 
arg-fallbackName=")O( Hytegia )O("/>
Internet-Quotes.jpg
 
arg-fallbackName="CommonEnlightenment"/>
theyounghistorian77 said:
"The world of the death camps and the society it engenders reveals the progressively intensifying night side of Judeo-Christian civilization. Civilization means slavery, wars, exploitation and death camps. It also means medical hygiene, elevated religious ideas, beautiful art and exquisite music." - Richard Rubenstein, "The Cunning of History", p91.

Reading Dotoree's posts has made me think about this quote and me possibly deploying it everytime someone like him makes the absurd argument that Christians can only "do good" despite said Christians having a long record of appaling acts (the Inquisition being one example)
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One could also make the case that the passing of Prop 8 in California could be considered an oppression or limitation of rights. Just in case you were looking for a more recent example. The California Supreme Court recently overturned Prop 8.

Granted, I will agree that some of the organizations that some Christians establish can be a help to the community in very specific cases. But again, it appears that some Christians only look in one direction as you stated above.

"Doing Good" in the name of something and actually showing that the thing exists (in this very specific case, god) are two different questions with a different set of things that should be accepted as evidence.
 
arg-fallbackName="Inferno"/>
From Alan Lightman's intricate 1993 novel Einstein's Dreams; set in Berne in 1905:
With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great aunts"¦and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own"¦Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.

Found at The "unpublished jottings" of Christopher Hitchens from his posthumous book, Mortality.
 
arg-fallbackName="Frenger"/>
Inferno said:
From Alan Lightman's intricate 1993 novel Einstein's Dreams; set in Berne in 1905:
With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great aunts"¦and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own"¦Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.
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This is 99p on the Amazon.co.uk Kindle Daily deal. Just bought it, shall look forward to reading that.
 
arg-fallbackName="Daealis"/>
A finnish inmate serving a life sentence, turned preacher:

"It used to be Jesus using an ass, now the asses are using Jesus."

It was a comment on the issue of prison conversion and using this to get out sooner. Applies pretty well to fundies in my mind...
 
arg-fallbackName="Lallapalalable"/>
“There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Yeah, he was speaking from a religious perspective, but I think the observation is priceless.
 
arg-fallbackName="Inferno"/>
"Did you know that? I didn't. I realized I practically didn't know anything about these people I’d hated my entire life. Everything I thought was true went up in smoke that day, supplanted by the face of our real enemy." -World War Z novel, Max Brooks

The above is a Muslim talking about Jews. He learns that they're really all-right.
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act - George Orwell

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. - Bertrand Russell

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. - Thomas Paine

I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable. - Mark Twain
 
arg-fallbackName="Frenger"/>
hackenslash said:
I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable. - Mark Twain
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Amazing!
 
arg-fallbackName="he_who_is_nobody"/>
Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If The Eiffel Tower were now to represent the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.
- Samuel Langhorne Clemens​
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Evolution is a blind giant who rolls a snowball down a hill. The ball is made of flakes—circumstances. They contribute to the mass without knowing it. They adhere without intention, and without foreseeing what is to result. When they see the result they marvel at the monster ball and wonder how the contriving of it came to be originally thought out and planned. Whereas there was no such planning, there was only a law: the ball once started, all the circumstances that happened to lie in its path would help to build it, in spite of themselves.
- Samuel Langhorne Clemens​
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I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
- Samuel Langhorne Clemens​
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