S.T. Joshi Quotes

I am He who howls in the night; I am He who moans in the snow; I am He who hath never seen light; I am He who mounts from below. My car is the car of Death; My wings are the wings of dread; My breath is the north wind's breath; My prey are the cold and the dead.

God's existence needs to be established independently before he can be brought into account for causation; it cannot be assumed at the start.

You might say I was a passive atheist through my teenage years.

weaving his way across

When I read passages like this, I want to look for the nearest wall to bang my head against.

Since it is impossible for us to know, prior to engaging in a discussion, which opinion is true and which is false, it is dangerous to entrust the government with the power to suppress what it believes to be falsehood; for that purported falsehood may turn out to be the truth. In any event, truth can be ascertained only by the full airing of views on all sides; in the absence of such an airing, even a true belief can become stale and lifeless.

Richard Gavin is one of the bright new stars in contemporary weird fiction. His richly textured style, deft character portrayal, and powerful horrific conceptions make every one of his tales a pleasure to read.

Any system of morals which has a theological basis becomes one of the tools by which the holders of power preserve their authority and impair the intellectual vigor of the young. ("Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?" [1954], Y 196)

I myself am not comfortable with the notion of secularists congregating in groups, except perhaps for defensive purposes: the last thing a secularist should wish to do is to act like a religion, with its rigid hierarchies, its suppression of divergent opinion, and, above all, its ruthless attempts (now mercifully inhibited by laws) to outlaw "heresy" by brute force. Opinions must be changed, one at a time if necessary, but if there are those who wish to persist in religious belief, they should certainly be allowed to do so.

I have long ago lost my belief in immortality also my interest in it.... I have sampled this life and it is sufficient.... Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born.... There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.?

I may have had a prejudice against agnosticism as a body of thought: sort of a fence-sitting theory, where you can't make up your mind one way or another.

The decline of witch-belief was ... entirely the product of religious skepticism ... The Catholic Church did not reform itself on this matter; it was forced by outside pressure to reform. To be sure, the Protestant churches were no better in this regard; it is simply that they had less time - only two or three centuries - to engage in the torching of witches. After all, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, stated quite correctly that disbelief in witches meant a disbelief in the Bible.

My father insisted that I and my sisters not be indoctrinated into any religion at any age.

[Marriage] promote[s] the moral order of the world - Edith Wharton "The Eyes