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I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. If you can conceive of morality without god, why can you not conceive of society without government? Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen. Civil disobedience, that’s not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. All great truths begin as blasphemies. The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scale. Take only memories; leave nothing but footprints. They made a wasteland and called it peace. The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers. A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but can’t afford an air force. What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be ... surer of the noose than a private homicide. 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. Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. When you philosophically oppose an entire power elite, you cannot help but sound like a conspiracy theorist. Social power is by nature a conspiracy. Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist (pirate?). You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor. Insanity in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule. If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do. Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. One man's magic is another man's engineering. Supernatural is a null word. We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents. A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. If child molestation is actually your concern, how come we don't see Bradley tanks knocking down Catholic churches? Do you see now that your self-righteousness was nothing more than breeding and years of privilege? You know, we are one nation under a god. Yes, you were right. An angry, crack slinging god who decorates with bullets and spent condoms, a blind god whose eyes are just like yours. Religion, comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form nowhere else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr. Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's? The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts. … The biggest detractors of communism and socialism always seem to want to embrace the worst excesses of both. Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god. Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith ... we need believing people. I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo. Men are not punished for their sins, but by them. I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. Unless Americans come to realize that they are not stronger in the world because they have the bomb but weaker because of their vulnerability to atomic attack, they are not likely to conduct their policy, in a spirit that furthers the arrival at an understanding. Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. The same people that wrote the bible thought the world was flat. If god created us in his image we have certainly returned the compliment. Stopping terrorism is simple. Just quit screwing around with other people's countries and the terrorists will go home. But the government of the United States wants to go on screwing around with other people's countries, refuses to stop, indeed views it as Manifest Destiny for the United States Government to persist in screwing around with other people's countries, and views the inconvenience, increased tax burden, loss of civil liberties, and even deaths among the American people as just another cost of doing business. Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead. Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching. Git yer guns, the liberal folks are gonna let the coloreds vote! Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. |
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