Charles Weaver > Charles's Quotes

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#1

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

tags: america, history, immigration, politics, revolution, united-states, usa

1128 likes

#2

“Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.”
― Edward Abbey

tags: politics

494 likes

#3

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

tags: arrogance, ignorance, politicians, politics

764 likes

#4

“In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.”
― George Washington

tags: democracy, freedom, justice, politics, scope-of-government

303 likes

#5

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
― Patrick Henry

tags: politics

312 likes

#6

“Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake.”
― Jon Stewart

tags: humor, religion

1283 likes

#7

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

tags: affection, atheism, cats, dogs, food, god, pets, religion, shelter, water

3397 likes

#8

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion: A Study of Religious Belief and Skepticism

tags: bible, christianity, god, organized-religion, religion, yahweh

1907 likes

#9

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
― Thomas Jefferson

tags: atheism, philosophy, religion

1344 likes

#10

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
― G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

tags: christian-behavior, christianity, pacifism, religion

1550 likes

#11

“Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely! In broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion... perhaps around their necks? And maybe -- dare I dream it? -- maybe one day there can be an openly Christian President. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively.”
― Jon Stewart

tags: christianity, humor, religion

658 likes

#12

“In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

tags: christian-behavior, christianity, religion

1226 likes

#13

“I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”
― George Carlin

tags: organized-religion, religion

725 likes

#14

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.”
― Stephen Colbert

tags: christ, christian, christian-behavior, poor, religion, selfish

1237 likes

#15

“I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

tags: god, religion, truth

369 likes

#16

“Your way of life is sinful and wrong," he said fiercely.
Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares, though they are the backbone of your church, and seeks to control his worshippers through guilt and fear.”
― P.C. Cast, Betrayed

tags: organized-religion, religion

279 likes

#17

“Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

tags: error, fools, free-inquiry, hypocrites, reason, religious-violence, uniformity

313 likes

#18

“We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

{Letter from the commissioners, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786}”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

tags: islam, koran, mohammed, muslim, musselman, paradise, quran, religious-violence, the-prophet, the-prophet-mohammed, tripli

255 likes

#19

“More generally, as I shall repeat in Chapter 8, one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion: A Study of Religious Belief and Skepticism

tags: satisfaction, understanding

688 likes

#20

“...legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

tags: civil-rights, government, organized-religion, religion, separation-of-church-and-state

415 likes

#21

“Argue not concerning God,…re-examine all that you have been told at church or school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul…”
― Walt Whitman

tags: personal-faith, religion

197 likes

#22

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg

tags: atheism, bible, god, religion

846 likes

#23

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion

tags: religion

339 likes

#24

“This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child

tags: doctrine, equal-rights, freedom, liberty, morality, rights

543 likes

#25

“Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”
― Émile Zola

tags: atheism, civilization, organized-religion, religion

435 likes

#26

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: cult, danger, law, organized-religion, power, religion, sect, separation-of-church-and-state

432 likes

#27

“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

tags: corruption, magistrate, organized-religion, roman-empire, rome, useful, worship

325 likes

#28

“The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, that is true perversion!”
― Harvey Milk

tags: history, organized-religion, religion

224 likes

#29

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

tags: belief, bible, cruel, cruelty, murder, rapine, the-bible

400 likes