“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.”
G.K. Chesterton in Where All Roads Lead quoted in Gilbert! magazine January/February 2002
“All purposeful human action is self-interested, in the crucial sense that it aims at goals accepted by the individual, using means evaluated by the individual. Greed or selfishness, by contrast, is a matter of claiming for the self more than is due.”
Paul Heyne “The Concept of Economic Justice in Religious Discussion”
“Religion is a form of indoctrination, which requires a considerable amount of literacy. You cannot get religion into people minus literacy. And as literacy weakens, people lose their religious affiliations.”
Marshall McLuhan “Violence as a Quest for Identity” (1977) in Marshall McLuhan Understanding Me
“Unconditional surrender of our enemies [is] the signal for the greatest outburst of joy in the history of mankind. Holiday rejoicing is necessary to the human spirit.”
“Prime Minister Winston Churchill said in his May 8 Victory in Europe day broadcast” quoted by Ted Barris in National Post May 6, 2005
“Now in the case of water, by splashing it one can make it shoot up higher than one’s forehead, and by forcing it one can make it stay on a hill. How can that be the nature of water? It is the circumstances being what they are. That man can be made bad shows that his nature is no different from that of water in this respect.”
Mencius in a collection of his writings titled simply Mencius
“The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.”
Graham Greene, quoted as “Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in Globe & Mail March 29, 2005
“if Christianity were once abolished, how could the Freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning be able to find another subject, so calculated in all points, whereon to display their abilities? what wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, has been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any other subject?”
Jonathan Swift “Argument Against Abolishing Christianity in England” in A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works
“human beings, that is... psychotic apes who want to kill so much that they could not even understand an unconditional prohibition against killing, much less obey it.”
Northrop Frye The Great Code