Quotations

On evil
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
--Steven Weinberg, physicist, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999.

On the value of now:
"The knowledge that immortality is an illusion...liberates all our energy and time for the realization and extension of the happy potentialities of this good earth."
-- Corliss Lamont

On the Ten Commandments:

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. . . .

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

-- Kurt Vonnegut, quoted at http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/06.30.04/vonnegut-0427.html, visited 2 July 2004.

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Last revised: 1 February 2011