After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands. —Friedrich Nietzsche
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. —John Adams
The concern of today isn’t communism, it’s moving America toward a fascist theocracy. —Frank Zappa
There is a question whether faith can or is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. I must say that the thought of everyone lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. —Flannery O’Connor
Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around. If you’re looking for violent rape imagery, the Bible’s right there in your hotel room. If you just want to look up ways to screw people up, there it is, and you’re justified because God told you to. —Penn Jillette
Propoganda makes up our minds for us, but in such a way that it leaves us the sense of pride and satisfaction of men who have made up their own minds. And in the last analysis, propoganda achieves this effect because we want it to. —Thomas Merton
The trouble with God isn’t that He so seldom makes Himself known to us…. He’s holding you and me and everybody else by the scruff of the neck practically constantly…. Contentedly adrift in the cosmos, were you?…That is a perfect description of a non-epiphany, that rarest of moments, when God Almighty lets go of the scruff of your neck and lets you be human for a little while. —Kurt Vonnegut
Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me. —Frederick Buechner
Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. —Thomas Jefferson
Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure. —Rumi
All those Good Sam Medical Centers should really have been named Man Who Fell Among Thieves Hospitals; it is the patients in their sufferings and deaths, not the help in white coats, who look more like Jesus on the cross. Jesus drives the same point home in the parable of the Great Judgment: it is precisely in the hungry, the thirsty, the estranged, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned that we find, or ignore, the Savior himself. —Robert Farrar Capon, Parables of the Kingdom
Kindness is humanizing, and despite the fact that I love the intellectual debate as much as the next mental-masturbating prick, theology ultimately seems to dehumanize, especially in the hands of an amateur. —Bill Siems
When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. —Martin Luther King, Jr.
In my own debilitating tendency to read the Bible as if it says what I already know and believe instead of reading it repentantly with a mind ready to yield to transformation, I need whatever I can get my hands on to better get my head around the meaning of indefatigable, irrefutable, and embarrassingly credible apocalytic. If it doesn’t challenge my preconceived notions in any way, if its superlativeness doesn’t leave me chastened, I’m probably not looking at it properly. —David Dark
Dear Child of God, I write these words because we all experience sadness, we all come at times to despair, and we all lose hope that the suffering in our lives and in the world will ever end. I want to share with you my faith and my understanding that this suffering can be transformed and redeemed. There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case. Our God is an expert at dealing with chaos, with brokenness, with all the worst that we can imagine....Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.—Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Knock it off, nice people. I see through you like rice paper in front of a Klieg light. —Adam Carolla
