Worldwide Church of God: Quotations

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-- Professor Steven Weinberg,
(Emperor Has No Clothes Award winner, November 1999)

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too."

"The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security." FBI Director Louis Freeh (1993)

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ...".

"Truth is hate to those who hate the truth. And that is the truth." -- Anonymous

"The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind."

"Strange times are these, in which we live, when old and young are taught in falsehood's school. And the one man who dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool." -

"Any truth is better than make-believe ... rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth" -

"Most people, sometime in their lives, stumble across truth. Most jump up, brush themselves off, and hurry on about their business as if nothing had happened."

"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others." -

"The lust for power, for dominating others, inflames the heart more than any other passion"

"... it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen to set brush fires in people's minds..." -- Samuel Adams,

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

"I believe that there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

"It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong."

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters." Allan Simpson

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

'Everyone's scared of nutters, but even nutters are scared of religious nutters'

"Life can be beautiful, profound, and awe-inspiring, even without an irate god threatening us with eternal torment."

Quote: "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

-- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930

"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
-- Samuel Clemens, author who wrote under the nom de plume, Mark Twain

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." -- Abraham Lincoln

"It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, it may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result."

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

"Do not be afraid of your enemies - in the worst case they can kill you; Do not be afraid of your friends - in the worst case they can betray you; Be afraid of the indifferent ones: it is from their silent blessings that all the evil is happening in the world!" -- Bruno Yasensky, Russian writer.

Voltaire commented, "If God created man in his own image, we have certainly returned the favor."

"Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen."

"... there is much truth in the Italian saying, 'Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you.'" -- Benjamin Franklin

"Organized religion is for those who are afraid of hell and spirituality is for those who have been there."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
-- H.L. Mencken

You can take a person out of the cult, but you can't take the cult out of a person. Remove his cult and he'll find another one.
-- John Bowers

"If you're not a Liberal by the age of 18, you have no heart.
If you're not conservative by the age of 30, you have no sense.

" I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth, if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives"

...there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new one....

For what is Truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived.

Simpletons are those who are convinced of their infallibility, while experts are those who realize they don't really know much at all.

More harm has been done by people trying to do good than by people trying to do harm.

"It is a pity ignorance is not painful. Then we might do something to alleviate it."

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

The real purveyors and defenders of truth face critique; indeed, they welcome it, for they have nothing to hide; besides, they may find themselves the recipients of Enlightenment.

"What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." Sir Walter Scott

"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. ... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."

(Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789)

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."

-- George Washington, Commanding General of the Continental Army, Father of Our Country and First President of the United States in a speech to Congress, January 7, 1790

"1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future."

"For god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in him would believe in anything."

"The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler is that God is more proficient at genocide."

Explaining the unknown by means of the unobservable is always a perilous business.

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity you don't realize how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

Theists think all gods but theirs are false. Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one.

FAITH -
An attitude fostered by individuals in high places in order to ensure the subservience of those in their charge.

freethinker n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief.

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.

"Faith is deciding to allow yourself to believe something your intellect would otherwise cause you to reject -- otherwise there's no need for faith."

God hated the world so much that he sent his only son so that whoever does not believe in him will perish and be denied eternal life.

Reason is, of all things in the world, the most hurtful to a reasoning human being. God only allows it to remain with those he intends to damn, and his goodness takes it away from those he intends to save or render useful in the Church . . . If reason had any part in religion, what then would become of faith?

"The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
[Herbert Agar, "A Time for Greatness" 1942]

"As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless conversions -- to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy
is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational -- the powers of reason are surprisingly ineffective in changing the believer's mind."
[Steve Allen]

"God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith, then, is built upon ignorance and hope."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen, on the Bible Religion & Morality"]

"If...we assume that there is no God, it follows that morality is even more important than if there is a Deity. If God exists, his unlimited power can certainly redress imbalances in the scale of human justice. But if there is no God, then it is up to man to be as moral as he can."
[Steve Allen]

"Another philosopher suggests that saying prayers is equivalent to believing that the universe is governed by a Being who changes his mind if you ask him to."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen On the Bible, Religion and Morality," 1990]

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
[Susan B. Anthony]

"If you were taught that elves caused rain, every time it rained, you'd see the proof of elves."
[Ariex]

"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly and warn the people of Canada..."
Isaac Asimov

"We owe it to ourselves as respectable human beings, as thinking human beings, to do what we can to make humanity more rational...Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests."
[Isaac Asimov]

"...anger is the common substitute for logic among those who have no evidence for what they desperately want to believe."
Isaac Asimov

"It seems to me that it's insulting to human beings to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being...I have a conscience. It doesn't depend on religion."
Isaac Asimov

"People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy."
Mikhail A. Bakunin

"Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have."
James Baldwin

"The very concept of sin comes from the bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?"
Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"

"It's not easy to change world views. Faith has its own momentum and belief is comfortable. To restructure reality is traumatic and scary. That is why many intelligent people continue to believe: unbelief is an unknown."
Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"

"Not thinking critically, I assumed that the "successful" prayers were proof that God answers prayer while the failures were proof that there was something wrong with me."
Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"

"Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, "yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it."
[ex-preacher Dan Barker]

"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that _we_ are the ones that need help?"
Dan Barker

"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits."
Dan Barker Former evangelist, author, critic

"Modern societies march towards morality in proportion as they leave religion behind."
[Paul Bert]

"Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice."
Georges Bizet

"Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation."

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