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Interesting quotes:

On topics from Hell to Intolerance

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Included are quotes on: Hell, Holocaust, homosexuality, hope, hypoocrisy, religious intolerance, general intolerance

Hell:

	Thomas Aquinas: "That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly, they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell." Summa Theologica.
	Anon: "Everyone is going to hell according someone's religion."
	John Calvin: "There are babies a span long in hell."
	George Washington Carver, 1911: "When our thoughts -- which bring actions -- are filled with hate against anyone, Negro or white, we are in a living hell. That is as real as hell will ever be.
	Celsus, a poster on Amazon's "A Question for Christians" forum on 2008-MAY-06: "Heaven is an eternal church service. You do stuff like bowing and singing songs to God, telling him how great he is, because he really likes that. And there's no sex and no ocean and no food and no sleep, because no one ever does anything except stand around worshipping God for eternity. This may explain why so many people opt for hell."
	Dante: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
	Richard Dawkins: "Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?
	Jonathan Edwards: "The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. . .Can the believing father in Heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in Hell. . . I tell you, yea! Such will be his sense of justice that it will increase rather than diminish his bliss." - "The Eternity of Hell Torments" (Sermon), April 1739.
	Ralph Waldo Emerson: "To different minds, the same world is a hell and a heaven."
	Heinrich Hein: "I care little in the existence of a heaven or hell; self respect does not allow me to guide my acts with an eye toward heavenly salvation or hellish punishment. I pursue the good in life because it is beautiful and attracts me; and shun the bad because it is ugly and repulsive. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not."
	Robert Ingersoll: "The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings."
	ISP, an anonymous contributor to an Amazon.com forum: "Why does God punish us with suffering throughout life and an eternity in hell afterwards? Because we are born evil and depraved! But why are we born evil and depraved? Because God makes us that way. So God makes us a certain way and then punishes us for being that way??!"|
	Thomas Paine: "Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man."
	Reverend C. H. Spurgeon: "When thou diest, thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a hell for it, but at the day of judgment they body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy body will lie, asbestos-like, forever unconsumed, all they veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall forever play his diabolical tune of 'Hell's Unutterable Lament'."
	Isaac Watts: "What bliss will fill the ransomed souls, when they in glory dwell, to see the sinner as he rolls, in quenchless flames of hell."

Holocaust:

New York Times book review of Sebastian Haffner's memoir "Defying Hitler:"  "Why did a great nation like Germany elevate the scum of its own people to power, and then follow them into the abyss?...An astonishing memoir, written decades ago and only now making its appearance, freshly illuminates this gnawing enigma." Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store

Homosexuality: 

	Anon: "If GOD did not make homosexuals, there would be none."
	Anon: "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."
	Anon: "God made 'Adam and Eve' not 'Adam and Steve'?...hmmmm...then who made 'Steve'?"
	Anon: "Hate is far more of a choice than homosexuality will ever be."
	Anon: "Hate is not a family value."
	Anon: "Equal rights are not special rights."
	Anon: "Why do we have to recycle the old conflict so many times: first we fight about slavery, then segregation, then gender, and now sexual orientation? Gender identity is on the horizon. Why can't people look at the phrase 'liberty and justice for all' and simply accept out that 'all' means 'all.' "
	Jimmy Carter, quoted in the Los Angeles Times: "We must make it clear that a platform of 'I hate gay men and women' is not a way to become president of the United States."
	Ed Dobson, former VP of Moral Majority, Inc.: "I haven't changed in the sense that I believe sexuality is a gift from God to be expressed exclusively within the commitment of heterosexual marriage and that all other expressions of that are outside the boundaries of God's creative intent as revealed in the Scripture. However, I do not believe that gives you a license to hate people, including homosexuals, and I think part of the struggle for people is that it's easy, it's easy to beat up what you don't understand. I have sat and listened to story after story after story from gay people of their journey and have cried with them and tried to listen to the awful pain they go through. [It] hasn't changed what I believe about the practice of homosexuality, but it has reminded me that 'Whom you would change you must first love.' Martin Luther King, Jr. said that. And in general, Christians have not been very good about loving gay people. Oh, they'll tell you they hate the sin but they love the sinner, but I don't see much love for the sinner."
	Jerry Falwell: Quoted in Jim Hill & Rand Cheadle, "The Bible Tells Me So", Anchor Books (1996), P. 69-70: "[homosexuals are] brute beasts...part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven."
	Billy Graham: "All homosexuals should be castrated." (Dr. Graham later apologized for this statement). 5
	Steve Gunderson, first openly gay Republican congressman: "...the worst thing that happened to the gay community was the fall of communism...As long as the conservative movement had communism to fight, they could organize and raise their money over that issue. The minute they lost communism, they had to find a new enemy, and that enemy became homosexuality."
	Vangie Jones; from a letter to the editor of the Maui News, Maui, HI, on 1997-FEB-3, titled "Change breeds fear:"  "Homosexuality is a discovery, not a choice or a sin."
	Lynn Lavner: "The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision."
	Rory Lewis (performer): "The epitome of evil is having spiritual leaders condone hate, in the name of God, against others such as our gay brothers and sisters."
	Leonard Matlovich: Epitaph on his tombstone. He served for 12 years in the US Air Force, received exemplary ratings, won a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. After revealing his homosexual orientation, he was dishonorably discharged: "Here lies a man who was given a medal for killing two men, and a dishonorable discharge for loving one."
	Chief Justice Moore, Alabama Supreme Court: "...the homosexual conduct of a parent -- conduct involving a sexual relationship between two persons of the same gender -- creates a strong presumption of unfitness that alone is sufficient justification for denying that parent custody of his or her own children or prohibiting the adoption of the children of others.... Homosexual conduct is, and has been, considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated. Such conduct violates both the criminal and civil laws of this State and is destructive to a basic building block of society -- the family....It is an inherent evil against which children must be protected."1
	Salt Lake City Board of Education:"...UFO Club, Hispanic Club,...Native American Club, Human Rights Club, ...Young Democrats,...UFO (Ultimate Frisbee Organization), Advancement of Hispanic Students, ...Chinese Checkers Club...HIS Club (a Bible study club),...Latino Pride Club,...Students Against Drunk Driving, Students of the Orient, Young Republicans." This is a partial list of high-school clubs forcibly terminated in 1996 after the board determined it was the only method of legally eradicating a single student gay/lesbian support club. One can only imagine the hatred that this decision by the board caused towards gays and lesibans.
	Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican archbishop concerning racism and homophobia: "We struggled against apartheid because we were being blamed and made to suffer for something we could do nothing about. It is the same with homosexuality. The orientation is a given, not a matter of choice. It would be crazy for someone to choose to be gay, given the homophobia that is present."

Hope:

	Jesse Jackson: "At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backward by fear and division."
	Nietzsche: "Hope is the worst of the evils, for it prolongs the torment of man."
	Eric Fromm: "To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our life time."
	Albert Schweitzer: "Because I have confidence in the power of truth and in the spirit, I believe in the future of mankind. Affirmation of the world and of life contains within itself an optimistic willing and hoping which can never be lost. It is, therefore, never afraid to face the dismal reality and to see it as it really is."

Hypocrisy:

	Anon: "How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite."
	Anon: "When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within."
	Lord Byron, from Don Juan: "Be hypocritical, be cautious, be not what you seem but always what you see."
	Nathaniel Hawthorne: "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true."
	Dr. Laud: "Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets.
	Charles Spurgeon: "Men turn their faces to hell, and hope to get to heaven; why don't they walk into the horsepond, and hope to be dry?."
	Voltaire, from A Philosophical dictionary: "How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite."

Intolerance, General:

	Anon: "Prejudice is being down on something you're not up on."
	Anon: "We have lobbed verses of Scripture, like hand grenades, into the camps of others, convinced that we, alone, have truth."
	Henry Seidel Canby: "If the bell of intolerance tolls for one, it tolls for all."
	Bill Clinton; part of his 1997 Presidential Inaugural Address : "The divide of race has been America's constant curse. Each new wave of immigrants gives new targets to old prejudices. Prejudice and contempt, cloaked in the pretense of religious or political conviction, are no different. They have nearly destroyed us in the past. They plague us still. They fuel the fanaticism of terror. They torment the lives of millions in fractured nations around the world. These obsessions cripple both those who are hated and, of course, those who hate, robbing both of what they might become."
	Alan M. Dershowitz, author of The Trials of Zion: "All religions and cultures suffer from sources that preach hate against the ‘other.’ Throughout history some have, tragically, practiced what their sources preached, while some have sought to dismiss or even counteract the hateful words of their sources."
	Albert Einstein: "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by [the age of] 18."
	Reinhold Niebuhr: "The chief source of man's inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men."

Reference:

1. "Supreme Court of Alabama, 1002045, Petition for Writ of Certiorari," at: http://www.wallacejordan.com/1002045.htm

Copyright © 1996 to 2013 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Copyrights for the individual quotations held by their creators
Last updated: 2013-APR-15
Compiled by: B.A. Robinson

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