Susan Jacoby Quotes

Quotes about:

• This mindless tolerance, which places observable scientific facts, subject to proof, on the same level as unprovable supernatural fantasy, has played a major role in the resurgence of both anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism.

  Susan Jacoby

  Tolerance, Roles, Levels

  FaceBook post by Susan Jacoby from Aug 27, 2013

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• Americans are in serious intellectual trouble - in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

  Susan Jacoby

  Truth, Expectations, Intellectual

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• hope is not a plan of action.

  Susan Jacoby

  Hope, Thinking, Action

  Susan Jacoby (2011). “Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age”, p.126, Vintage

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• The biggest religious wars and persecutions in history occur when religions, each claiming their own absolute truths, come into conflict.

  Susan Jacoby

  Religious, War, Conflict

  "'Strange Gods' Chronicles The History Of Secularism And Conversion". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 17, 2016.

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• We do want our fellow citizens to respect our deeply held conviction that the absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth.

  Susan Jacoby

  Afterlife, Citizens, Earth

  "The Blessings of Atheism". www.nytimes.com. Jane 5, 2013.

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• Too many Americans have twisted the sensible right to pursue happiness into the delusion that we are entitled to a guarantee of happiness. If we don't get exactly what we want, we assume someone must be violating our rights. We're no longer willing to write off some of life's disappointments to simple bad luck.

  Susan Jacoby

  Disappointment, Writing, Simple

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• The forgetting of the history of marginalized groups is both a cause and effect of their marginalization.

  Susan Jacoby

  History, Groups, Causes

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• Throughout the three decades preceding the Civil War, the anticlerical ethos of the radical abolitionists was used against them by religious opponents of emancipation, who . . . even described abolitionism itself as an atheist plot.

  Susan Jacoby

  Religious, Atheist, War

  Susan Jacoby (2005). “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism”, p.70, Macmillan

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• God Bless America started to become an almost ritualistic incantation at the end of political speeches really with Ronald Reagan. It appears occasionally before, but it was not that common. And of course since it was a song that wasn't written by Irving Berlin until the 20th century (laughter), none of the 19th century presidents said God Bless America at the end of speeches, either. I think that the symbolism which suggests that everybody is religious and that even presidents who believe in church and state feel obliged to do this.

  Susan Jacoby

  Song, Religious, Laughter

  "'Strange Gods' Chronicles The History Of Secularism And Conversion". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 17, 2016.

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• Whether you are religious or nonreligious, may you find solace in the knowledge that the suffering is ours, but that those we love suffer no more.

  Susan Jacoby

  Religious, Grieving, Suffering

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• I'm not saying that I think atheists are better than other people. God, no. What I am saying is I do feel that this an integral part of who I am. And it's not something that I could comfortably think of not sharing with the person I loved most in the world.

  Susan Jacoby

  Atheist, Thinking, Who I Am

  "'Strange Gods' Chronicles The History Of Secularism And Conversion". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 17, 2016.

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• The government should not be in the business of funneling money for social services through any faith-based organization

  Susan Jacoby

  Government, Organization, Social

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• My atheism doesn't define my day-to-day life at all. But I realize - and maybe it is because, unlike people who sort of stay comfortably in a religion, I had to do a lot of thinking and reading before I realized that I was an atheist.

  Susan Jacoby

  Atheist, Reading, Thinking

  "'Strange Gods' Chronicles The History Of Secularism And Conversion". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 17, 2016.

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• That so many manage to accommodate belief systems encompassing both the natural and the supernatural is a testament not to the compatibility of science and religion but to the flexibility, in both the physical and metaphysical senses, of the human brain.

  Susan Jacoby

  Brain, Belief, Natural

  Susan Jacoby (2005). “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism”, p.132, Macmillan

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• one of the great weaknesses of the women's rights movement over the past two hundred years has been the tendency of its history to disappear, so that it must be resurrected for each new generation.

  Susan Jacoby

  Past, Rights, Years

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• There could be no more powerful argument against mixing religion and government than the success of independent African American churches in placing racial segregation and discrimination on a reluctant nation's social agenda. Would black churches have been able to take the lead in the struggle had they been dependent on funds doled out for 'faith-based initiatives' . . . ?

  Susan Jacoby

  Powerful, Struggle, Independent

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• At its heart, all intellectual and emotional life is a conversation, and the conversation begins at birth.

  Susan Jacoby

  Women, Heart, Emotional

  Susan Jacoby (2008). “The Age of American Unreason”, p.269, Vintage

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• The more intelligent and competent a woman is in her adult life, the less likely she is to have received an adequate amount of romantic attention in adolescence.

  Susan Jacoby

  Sex, Intelligent, Adults

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• Real-life discussions involve a great many bores and boors who have never learned that the art of conversation demands listening as well as talking.

  Susan Jacoby

  Art, Real, Women

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• People think that, that conversion to Judaism is just a modern phenomenon. But there was an era in the late Roman Empire Judaism was not a proselytizing religion. It didn't go out looking for converts, but it accepted converts.

  Susan Jacoby

  Thinking, People, Empires

  "'Strange Gods' Chronicles The History Of Secularism And Conversion". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 17, 2016.

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• More than half of Americans have changed religions at least once in their adult lifetime. This is - the rate of religious conversion here is much, much higher than it is anywhere in Europe, for example.

  Susan Jacoby

  Religious, Europe, Adults

  "'Strange Gods' Chronicles The History Of Secularism And Conversion". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 17, 2016.

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• It is hard to think of conversion as a blinding light on the road to Damascus, or as a highly spiritual or intellectual process, when the light comes from a flickering television; the voice of the deity is Bishop Sheen and you have drilled your father on his catechism answers...I was troubled at a young age by the idea that pouring water over someone's head could change both his relationship to God.

  Susan Jacoby

  Spiritual, Father, Women

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• I can no more imagine falling in love with someone who believed that than I can imagine falling in love with someone who believes that blacks shouldn't be able to vote and are inferior to whites.

  Susan Jacoby

  Falling In Love, Believe, Able

  "'Strange Gods' Chronicles The History Of Secularism And Conversion". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 17, 2016.

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• It's something fundamental to me, human rights that people are equal under law simply because they are human beings. And I can no more imagine falling in love with someone who believed, for instance, as Orthodox Jews do, that women are unclean during their menstrual periods.

  Susan Jacoby

  Falling In Love, Rights, Law

  "'Strange Gods' Chronicles The History Of Secularism And Conversion". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 17, 2016.

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• Every brand of religion maintains, and is, a permanent mechanism for transmitting ideas and values - whether one regards those values as admirable or ridiculous. Secularist organizations, with their generally looser, nonhierarchical structures, lack the power to hand down and disseminate their heritage in such a systematic way.

  Susan Jacoby

  Hands, Organization, Ideas

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