In The Name Of Religion Quotes

It's almost impossible to deal with a crazy man, except that he does have religious beliefs, and the world of Islam will be damaged if a fanatic like him should commit murder in the name of religion against 60 innocent people. ~ Ruhollah Khomeini

Calling them devadasis we insult God Himself in the name of religion. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

In the name of religion, one tortures, persecutes, builds pyres. In the guise of ideologies, one massacres, tortures and kills. In the name of justice one punishes ... in the name of love of one's country or of one's race hates other countries, despises them, massacres them. In the name of equality and brotherhood there is suppression and torture. There is nothing in common between the means and the end, the means go far beyond the end ... ideologies and religion ... are the alibis of the means. ~ Eugene Ionesco

Religious tolerance is something we should all practice; however, there have been more persecution and atrocities committed in the name of religion and religious freedom than anything else. ~ Walter Koenig

I think that sacrifices of animals in the name of religion are barbarous and they degrade the name of religion. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

As it was a time of war between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and as he saw the Catholics exterminate the Huguenots and the Huguenots exterminate the Catholics--all in the name of religion--he adopted a mixed belief which permitted him to be sometimes Catholic, sometimes a Huguenot. Now, he was accustomed to walk with his fowling piece on his shoulder, behind the hedges which border the roads, and when he saw a Catholic coming alone, the Protestant religion immediately prevailed in his mind. He lowered his gun in the direction of the traveler; then, when he was within ten paces of him, he commenced a conversation which almost always ended by the traveler's abandoning his purse to save his life. It goes without saying that when he saw a Huguenot coming, he felt himself filled with such ardent Catholic zeal that he could not understand how, a quarter of an hour before, he had been able to have any doubts upon the superiority of our holy religion. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Just because people do bad things in the name of religion doesn't make the religion bad. People do crappy things, people do awesome things. That's just people. ~ Wendy Mills

...it was the business of such men as were prudent and wise to deceive the people in matters of religion, and in that very thing not only to worship, but also to imitate the demons, whose greatest lust is to deceive. For just as the demons cannot possess any but those whom they have deceived with guile, so also men in princely office, not indeed being just, but like demons, have persuaded the people in the name of religion to receive as true those things which they themselves knew to be false; in this way, as it were, binding them up more firmly in civil society, so that they might in like manner possess them as subjects. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

I agree with Dr. Makris. Does that mean I would let someone blow up my dead foot to help save the feet of NATO land mine clearers? It does. And would I let someone shoot my dead face with a nonlethal projectile to help prevent accidental fatalities? I suppose I would. What wouldn't I let someone do to my remains? I can think of only one experiment I know of that, were I a cadaver, I wouldn't want anything to do with. This particular experiment wasn't done in the name of science or education or safer cars or better-protected soldiers. It was done in the name of religion. ~ Mary Roach

Once a ruler becomes religious, it becomes impossible for you to debate with him. Once someone rules in the name of religion, your lives become hell. ~ Muammar Al-Gaddafi

The overwhelming problem in the world today, everyone knows, is terrorism, where people in the name of religion kill each other, kill others just to go to heaven, and thinking only they will go to heaven. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

We cry for cow protection in the name of religion, but we refuse protection to the human cow in the shape of the girl-widow. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Almost as many inhumanities are committed in the name of love as in the name of religion. ~ Bette Davis

It is worth recalling that Britain, over several centuries, waged a war against homosexuality - in the name of religion, social order, decency, etc. - that certainly equalled, and in its scale probably outstripped, anything that happens in Arab countries today. ~ Brian Whitaker

We first fought ... in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change. ~ Serj Tankian

What is freedom? What is slavery? Does man's freedom consist in revolting against all laws? We say No, in so far as laws are natural, economic, and social laws, not authoritatively imposed but inherent in things, in relations, in situations, the natural development of which is expressed by those laws. We say Yes if they are political and juridical laws, imposed by men upon men: whether violently by the right of force; whether by deceit and hypocrisy - in the name of religion or any doctrine whatever; or finally, by dint of the fiction, the democratic falsehood called universal suffrage. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

More people have died in the name of religion than have ever died of cancer. And we try to cure cancer ... What makes us take up arms against those who pray to the same God with different words? ~ Chuck Austen

People still kill in the name of religion. We haven't evolved to the point where we're one tribe called humans. ~ Rachel Weisz

The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country. ~ John McCain

The true object of religion is to bind mankind together, and to bind them all to God. If we see that in the name of religion, men, instead of promoting peace on earth and good-will among men, are trying to show their antagonism and animosity towards each other, then certainly we must stand forward with our voice of protest, and say that religion is defeating its own legitimate object. ~ Keshub Chandra Sen

In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakh girl-widows who could not understand the import of the marriage ceremony. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Humiliating people in the name of religion is the practice of someone deprived of the first fruit of religion, # humility . ~ Nouman Ali Khan

The terrible sacrifice offered to Kali in the name of religion enhanced my desire to know Bengali ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The Arab rulers are basically unpopular. They are supported by the United States against the wishes of their people. In all of this rather heady mixture of violence and policies that are remarkably unpopular right down to the last iota, it's not hard for demagogues, especially people who claim to speak in the name of religion, in this case Islam, to raise a crusade against the United States and say that we must somehow bring America down. ~ Edward Said

It seemed so odd that faith should so be sacrificed in the name of religion. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Don't hate the Muslims or Islam. Hate if you must, the fundamentalists who consistently compel the human society to turn away from even the peace loving Muslims. However, the term hate would be an understatement when we are referring to the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists are the biggest enemies of the human race. Without the presence of the fundamentalist inspiration, no violence in the name of religion shall ever fester on this planet. People from all religious, spiritual and non-religious background shall live in harmony, enriching each other's lives, if there are no fundamentalists to divide them apart. ~ Abhijit Naskar

[M]ore wars have been waged, more people killed, and more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history. The sad truth continues in our present day. ~ Charles Kimball

What people do in the name of religion is not necessarily religious. It often has baser reasons behind it. ~ Matthew Reilly

The evils which sapped the nation's strength had all been wrought in the name of religion. ~ Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

The argument in this book is that religious doctrines matter and are in need of reform. Non-doctrinal factors - such as the Saudis' use of oil revenues to fund Wahhabism and Western support for the Saudi regime - are important, but religious doctrine is more important. Hard as it may be for many Western academics to believe, when people commit violent acts in the name of religion, they are not trying somehow to dignify their underlying socioeconomic or political grievances. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if his doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his holy hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the damned, preached this doctrine; and he said: 'Can the believing husband in heaven be happy with his unbelieving wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in hell?' And he replies: 'I tell you, yea. Such will be their sense of justice, that it will increase rather than diminish their bliss.' There is no wild beast in the jungles of Africa whose reputation would not be tarnished by the expression of such a doctrine.
These doctrines have been taught in the name of religion, in the name of universal forgiveness, in the name of infinite love and charity. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Spirituality is not making walls in the names of religions and prophets but to make more roads and bridges to reconnect with humanity. ~ Amit Ray

The time has come to educate people, to cease all quarrels in the name of religion, culture, countries, different political or economic systems. Fighting is useless. Suicide. ~ Dalai Lama

The human tendency to find their sense of accomplishment within their family, caste, community, region, nation, language and religion will only lead to anarchy for others. In their particular reference framework, this whole quest is about finding one's identity, not eternal peace. The ongoing popular discourse in the world is guided by populist slogans for religion, country and community. It's selfish, misleading and is about one-upmanship. Most often, support is sought for the so called fight for identity in the name of religion and justice. Do ~ Acharya Balkrishna

In these pages, it is my intention to make many people - not only Muslims but also Western apologists for Islam - uncomfortable. I am not going to do this by drawing cartoons. Rather, I intend to challenge centuries of religious orthodoxy with ideas and arguments that I am certain will be denounced as heretical. My argument is for nothing less than a Muslim Reformation. Without fundamental alterations to some of Islam's core concepts, I believe, we shall not solve the burning and increasingly global problem of political violence carried out in the name of religion. I intend to speak freely, in the hope that others will debate equally freely with me on what needs to change in Islamic doctrine, rather than seeking to stifle discussion. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

There is only one religion and that is to love unconditionally. Those who kill in the name of religion are the bigot and biggest nonbeliever. ~ Debasish Mridha

Lord knows
and we both know
that too many wrongs have been committed in the name of religion ... But you're not here in the name of religion. Religion is an organization. Faith is within ... Catholic, cattolico
it means universal. Too often we forget that. ~ Heather Graham

Humility is a virtue of the heavenly, not arrogance. Are we the most superior beast on earth? No, not in strength and not in intelligence. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Both rats and monkeys have been shown to learn from error, yet we have not. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause on earth. Is destroying God's creations really serving God - or the devil? And what father would want to see his children constantly divided and fighting? What God would allow a single human life to be sacrificed for monetary gain? Again, the Creator or the devil? ~ Suzy Kassem

[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion. ~ Bertrand Russell

I would love it if we made more comparisons between current issues and issues of the past. Maybe we'd realize that sometimes 'current issues' and 'past issues' are one and the same. Our world's people still fight over natural resources, kill in the name of religion, occupy regions and give them up - just as we did 'so long ago.' ~ Adora Svitak

Consider our body as a temple and our heart as a place where God or the Guru resides. If we open up our hearts like the gates of the Golden Temple, if we don't fight with each other in the name of religion, if we treat every individual equally then the God inside us will be happy. When the God inside us becomes happy, we will become happy and when we will become happy then the temple will look all the more beautiful. ~ Raj Kiran Atagaraha

Christians have ... identified their opponents, whether Jews, pagans, or heretics, with forces of evil, and so with Satan ... Nor have things improved since. The blood-soaked history of persecution, torture, murder, and destruction perpetrated in the name of religion is difficult to grasp, let alohne summarize, from the slaughter of Christians to the Crusades to the Inquisitiion to the Reformation to the European witchcraze to colonialization to today's bitter coflict in the Middle East. ~ Elaine Pagels

Terrible things are done in the name of religion, without a doubt, but it was not religion but science that brought the world itself to the brink of destruction. ~ Chris Beckett

Women become the objects of rules; they are repressed and lose their rights in the name of religion, or they lose their freedom in the name of tradition, while the state legitimates this foolishness with laws. ~ Okky Madasari

Socrates poisoned, Aristides ostracized, Aristotle fleeing for his life, Jesus crucified, Paul beheaded, Peter crucified head downward, Savonarola martyred, Spinoza hunted, tracked and cursed, and an order issued that no man should speak to him not supply him food or shelter, Bruno burned, Galileo imprisoned, Huss, Wyclif, Latimer and Tyndale used for kindling - all this in the name of religion, institutional religion, the one thing that has caused more misery, heartaches, bloodshed, war, than all other causes combined. ~ Thomas Paine

Killing people in the name of religion does not make it religious. ~ Youssef Ziedan

I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted mankind. But I never appreciated it. I did not really appreciate the infamies that have been committed in the name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments that Christians used. I saw the Thumbscrew - two little pieces of iron, armed on the inner surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through each end a screw uniting the two pieces. And when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or may be said, 'I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a man to keep him from drowning,' then they put his thumb between these pieces of iron and in the name of love and universal forgiveness, began to screw these pieces together. When this was done most men said, 'I will recant.' Probably I should have done the same. Probably I would have said: 'Stop; I will admit anything that you wish; I will admit that there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves; but stop.'

But there was now and then a man who would not swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now and then some sublime heart, willing to die for an intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would be savages to-night. Had it not been for a few brave, heroic souls in every age, we would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our flesh, dancing around some dried snake fetich.

Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of hatred and dea ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

It's such a frustration when you see in the name of religion, in the name of God, what people are doing is something we never expected. The religion has to be Spirit-oriented, but it is only power-oriented or money-oriented. In the original scriptures, or we can say in the origin of this religion was the truth. And all these religions bloom on the same play of spirituality like beautiful flowers at different times, but people have plucked it and now they are fighting with the dead flowers. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

She reclaimed her virginity?"
"Leave it, Georgie. She can do whatever she wants with her virginity."
"Right," Georgie said, nodding her head. "Right ... It doesn't sound like such a bad idea, actually. Mayble I'll reclaim mine before you come back. In the name of Queen Elizabeth. ~ Rainbow Rowell

When I hear the name Michael Jackson, I think of brilliance, of dazzling stars, lasers and deep emotions. I think he is one of the world's biggest and greatest stars, and it just so happens that he is one of the most gifted music makers the world has ever known. I think he is one of the finest people to hit this planet, and, in my estimation, he is the true King of Pop, Rock, and Soul. I love you Michael. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

Uh huh, you sure can, Mr. Man," the heftier girl said smacking her lips. She expressively started to wave her long fingernail in his face. "You that actor that is fucking Lailiana ain't you." "Ethiopia! How you gonna ask the man who he fucking?" "Shit, why can't I? That's what he doing! That's what I heard he doing. He grown. He can answer for himself." First of all, who the hell does shit like that? Secondly, did she just say that the big tittied heifer's name is Ethiopia? ~ Will Blue

It wasn't enough to pass him as we were heading to your house or cutting over to the library. Soon you had to have sightings in the halls too. Then sightings turned to spying, and spying to stalking. You could tell me how many pairs of jeans he owned before you officially knew his name. ~ David Levithan

They call this love, she said to herself. I know what it is now. I never thought I would know, but I do now.

But she failed to add: if you can step back and identify it, is it really there? Shouldn't you be unable to know what the whole thing's about? Just blindly clutch and hold and fear that it will get away. But unable to stop, to think, to give it any name.

Just two more people sharing a common human experience. Infinite in its complexity, tricky at times, but almost always successfully surmounted in one of two ways: either blandly content with the results as they are, or else vaguely discontent but chained by habit. Most women don't marry a man, they marry a habit. Even when a habit is good, it can become monotonous; most do. When it is bad in just the average degree it usually becomes no more than a nuisance and an irritant; and most do.

But when it is darkly, starkly evil in the deepest sense of the word, then it can truly become a hell on earth.

Theirs seemed to fall midway between the first two, for just a little while. Then it started veering over slowly toward the last. Very slowly, at the start, but very steadily...

("For The Rest Of Her Life") ~ Cornell Woolrich

The biggest surprise for me, without a doubt, was that the first black people who came to the United States weren't the 20 who arrived in Jamestown in 1619. All of us had been taught that. Well, guess what? The first African came to Florida in 1513. And the huge shock is we know his name, Juan Garrido, and that he wasn't a slave. He was free! This brother was a conquistador who came with Ponce de Leon. He was looking for the Fountain of Youth just like the white people were. ~ Henry Louis Gates

And not only the world but humanity itself does need dragons"
"And why is that?" Chade demanded disdainfully.
"To keep the balance," the Fool replied. He glanced over me, and then past me, out of the window and his eyes went far and pensive. "Humanity fears no rivals. You have forgotten what it was to share the world with creatures as arrogantly superior as yourselves. You think to arrange the world to your liking. So you map the land and draw lines across it, claiming ownership simply because you can draw a picture of it. The plants that grow and the beasts that rove, you mark as your own, claiming not only what lives today, but what might grow tomorrow, to do with as you please. Then, in your conceit and aggression, you wage wars and slay one another over the lines you have imagined on the world's face."
"And I suppose dragons are better than we are because they don't do such things, because they simply take whatever they see. Free spirits, nature's creatures, possessing all the moral loftiness that comes from not being able to think."
The Fool shook his head, smiling. "No. Dragons are no better than humans. They are little different at all from men. They will hold up a mirror to humanity's selfishness. They will remind you that all your talk of owning this and claiming that is no more than the snarling of a chained dog or a sparrow's challenge song. The reality of those claims lasts but for the instant of its sounding. Name it as you will, claim it ~ Robin Hobb

Yet it is perhaps worth mentioning that the masculine tenor of God-talk is particularly problematic in English. In Hebrew, Arabic and French, however, grammatical gender gives theological discourse a sort of sexual counterpoint and dialectic, which provides a balance that is often lacking in English. Thus in Arabic al-Lah (the supreme name for God) is grammatically masculine, but the word for the divine and inscrutable essence of God - al-Dhat - is feminine. ~ Karen Armstrong

IN A WORLD WHERE THE WEAK ARE PREYED UPON... crime goes unpunished and evil runs rampant in the streets, who will stand up to chaos and fight for justice? There is only one: an outlaw biker with dead set principles and dangerous methods that get the job done. Asking nothing in return, he sets out for war in the name of the people, regardless of creed or colour. These are the stories of an outlaw about to douse the criminal world in gasoline and strike the match. He's a one man wrecking ball...today's Robin Hood, protector of the people. ~ Ryan Wickham

Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom. If you may have everything by asking in His Name, and nothing without asking, I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is. ~ Charles Spurgeon

One of the things that made me persist in the Antarctic in the face of sickening discouragements was my determination to name a portion of the earth's surface after my father. ~ Lincoln Ellsworth

Perhaps what I liked far more was the evening. Everything about it thrilled me. Every glance that crossed my own came like a compliment, or like an asking and a promise that simply lingered in midair between me and the world around me. I was electrified - by the chaffing, the irony, the glances, the smiles that seemed pleased I existed, by the buoyant air in the shop that graced everything from the glass door to the petits fours, to the golden ochre spell of plastic glasses filled with scotch whiskey, to Mr. Venga's rolled up sleeves, to the poet himself, down to the spiral staircase where we had congregated with the babe sisters - all seemed to glow with a luster at once spellbound and aroused. ~ Andre Aciman

Poem in October"

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could ~ Dylan Thomas

No parent can consistently teach faith in Christ who profanes the name of Deity. Profanity is never heard in the well-ordered home. Swearing is a vice that bespeaks a low standard of breeding. Blasphemous exclamations drive out all spirit of reverence. ~ David O. McKay

[Author's note:] When I decided to write this book, I worried that my privilege would make me blind to certain truths, that I would get things wrong, as I may well have. I worried that, as a non-immigrant and non-Mexican, I had no business writing a book set almost entirely in Mexico, set entirely among migrants. I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it. But then I thought, 'If you're a person who has the capacity to be a bridge, why not be a bridge?' So I began.

In the early days of my research, before I'd fully convinced myself that I should undertake the telling of this story, I was interviewing a very generous scholar, a remarkable woman who was chair of the Chicana and Chicano studies Department at San Diego State University. Her name is Norma Iglesias Prieto, and I mentioned my doubts to her. I told her I felt compelled, but unqualified, to write this book. She said, "Jeanine. We need as many voices as we can get, telling this story." Her encouragement sustained me for the next four years.

I was careful and deliberate in my research. I traveled extensively on both sides of the border and learned as much as I could about Mexico and migrants, about people living throughout the borderlands. The statistics in this book are all true, and though I changed some names, most of the places are real, too. But the characters, while representative of the folks I met during my travels, are fictional. ~ Jeanine Cummins

And then we're kissing. His lips are soft and leave mine tingling. I close my eyes, and in the darkness behind them I see beautiful blooming things, flowers spinning like snowflakes, and hummingbirds beating the same rhythm as my heart. I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free. His other hand pushes my hair from my face, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and Im breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed. ~ Lauren Oliver

All questions of process require an answer that begins with a very important sentence, and the sentence is: 'Everybody is different.' Whatever way of working you name - methodical, haphazard, gets up early in the morning, sleeps all day, works at night, revises immensely, never revises at all - someone has made great work with that way. ~ Robert Pinsky

That's quite a pile," he said. "I suppose you want me to spin it into gold."
"Well, the situation has changed just a bit," said the miller's daughter (who also had a name--it was Meredith). "If you don't, I will die. If you do, I marry the king."
Now that, thought Rumpelstiltskin, has possibilities. After all, getting to be the queen was a big step up for a miller's daughter. She would surely pay him anything. And there was only one thing in the world he really wanted--a little child to love and care for.
"Okay, here's the deal," he said. "I will spin the straw into gold, just like before. In return, once you become queen, you must let me adopt your firstborn child. I promise I'll be an excellent father. I know all the lullabies. I'll read to the child every day. I'll even coach Little League."
"You've got to be kidding," Meredith said. "I'd rather marry you than that jerk!"
"Really?" said Rumpelstiltskin, and he blushed all the way from the top of his head to the tip of his toes (which admittedly wasn't very far, because he was so short).
"Sure," she said. "I like your ideas on parenting, you'd make a good provider, and I have a weakness for short men. ~ Diane Stanley

Spread abroad the name of Jesus in humility and with a meek heart; show him your feebleness, and he will become your strength. ~ Thomas Merton

Hiro and Y.T. have eaten a lot of junk food together in different joints all
over L.A. -- doughnuts, burritos, pizza, sushi, you name it -- and all Y.T. ever
talks about is her mother and the terrible job that she has with the Feds. The
regimentation. The lie-detector tests. The fact that for all the work she
does, she really has no idea what it is that the government is really working
on.
It's always been a mystery to Hiro, too, but then, that's how the government is.
It was invented to do stuff that private enterprise doesn't bother with, which
means that there's probably no reason for it; you never know what they're doing
or why. Hackers have traditionally looked upon the government's coding
sweatshops with horror and just tried to forget that all of that shit ever
existed.
But they have thousands of programmers. The programmers work twelve hours a day
out of some twisted sense of personal loyalty. Their software-engineering
techniques, while cruel and ugly, are very sophisticated. They must have been
up to something. ~ Neal Stephenson

Return America to the Native Americans!
I'm all for returnin' America to the Native Americans.
No siree bub, I'm not talking about them
featherhead Indians with the casinos.
Fuck them greedy mixed breed tomahawk chuckers.
I'm talking about the real Native Americans ~
a proud people who came from a tiny mountainous region in Siberia
that walked across the ice 13,000 years ago to get here
and probably froze their balls off.

Native Americans,
whatever's left of y'allz,
take my country...please.
You deserve it ~
but on one condition:

You name the country Texas
and all the Christian white folk here get to have
our own friggin' casinos. ~ Beryl Dov

There is no excuse for human rights abuse, whether in the name of security or in the name of liberation. ~ Irene Khan

Korie: I met Willie for the first time when we were in the third grade at Camp Ch-Yo-Ca, the camp I grew up at. Willie and Jase went to my session of the camp, and Alan came for high school week. Kay was cooking in the kitchen that summer, so her boys could attend the camp for free. I remember thinking Willie was the cutest thing I had ever seen and was so funny. We called him by his middle name, Jess, at the time. He had these big dimples and the cutest sideways smile. I had a diary that I never really wrote in, but that summer, I wrote: "I met a boy at summer camp and he was so cute. He asked me on the moonlight hike and I said 'yes'!" I even wrote "Korie Loves Jess" on the bunk of the cabin I was staying in that summer.
Yes, Willie asked me to go on the moonlight hike with him. It was always a big deal every summer figuring out which boy was going to ask you to accompany him on the moonlight hike, and I was thrilled when he asked me! Willie was definitely my first crush. ~ Willie Robertson

You - she thought - whoever you are, whom I have always loved and never found, you whom I expected to see at the end of the rails beyond the horizon, you whose presence I had always felt in the streets of the city and whose world I had wanted to build, it is my love for you that had kept me moving, my love and my hope to reach you and my wish to be worthy of you on the day when I would stand before you face to face. Now I know that I shall never find you - that it is not to be reached or lived - but what is left of my life is still yours, and I will go on in your name, even though it is a name I'll never learn, I will go on serving you, even though I'm never to win, I will go on, to be worthy of you on the day when I would have met you, even though I won't.… She had never accepted hopelessness, but she stood at the window and, addressed to the shape of a fogbound city, it was her self-dedication to unrequited love. ~ Ayn Rand

Babylon would not be transforming into anything, and not any time soon. It was decimated; not just structurally and in human lives, but more importantly in essence. It was no longer the center of the world. There would be no mountain of the gods, no golem army. No more empire. Nimrod's cosmos lay shattered into a million pieces. He knew the Creator had cursed him. Nimrod had sought to make a name for himself as a Mighty Hunter, flaunting his prowess in the face of El Shaddai himself. He sought to make a tower that reached to the sky, linking heaven and earth. That tower had collapsed. The city would take decades to repopulate and rebuild the ruins. ~ Brian Godawa

When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago
and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail
it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do. It's astonishing to consider all the things from your past that used to happen all the time but (a) never happen anymore, and (b) never even cross your mind. It's almost like those things didn't happen. Or maybe it seems like they just happened to someone else. To someone you don't really know. To someone you just hung out with for one night, and now you can't even remember her name. ~ Chuck Klosterman

One afternoon, on my way to the campus - I was majoring in political science at Nairobi University - a photographer by the name of Peter Beard stopped me in the street and asked me if I'd ever been photographed. ~ Iman

justified in the name of "security" like almost every cowardly idiocy before and since, ~ Christopher Hitchens

Behind it, still expanding, still radiating, still slowly dissolving in the system to which it had given its name, the unnumbered twinkling fragments of the Orbital called Vavatch blew out toward the stars, drifting on a stellar wind that rang and swirled with the fury of the world's destruction. ~ Iain M. Banks

Stars! It looks as if you're winking amused at the idiocy of the people on this earth. You have every reason to laugh. You saw the battle that happened a hundred years ago, and the blood that flooded the ground a long time afterwards. You wonder why there should be so much enmity among human beings, so much carnage and bloodshed. And why this should be known as heroism!"
"Even after a man has been dead a hundred years, people continue to hate him. This is an enemy's pallipadai where people gather to torture the living in name of the dead. Stars in the sky! Why wouldn't you laugh! Laugh! ~ Kalki