Secular Quotes - Page 15

• Why is it that the Rev. Jesse Jackson can quote the Bible in support of his pet causes, but conservative ministers and lay people must argue purely on secular grounds for their social and political agenda?... It seems that mixing religion and politics is acceptable as long as the road turns to the left.

  Gary DeMar

  Christian, Religious, Long

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• Deflation and secular stagnation are the risks of our time.

  Lawrence Summers

  Inspiring, Risk, Economic

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• The barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular knowledge, no education, except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely acquired the rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to men whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero, of St. Augustine; and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was felt to be something infinitely vaster, stronger, holier than their newly founded States.

  Lord Acton

  Religious, Book, School

  Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom: Great Event”, p.29, VM eBooks

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• As the dominant social ethic changed from a religious to a secular one, the problem of heresy disappeared, and the problem of madness arose and became of great social significance. In the next chapter I shall examine the creation of social deviants, and shall show that as formerly priests had manufactured heretics, so physicians, as the new guardians of social conduct and morality, began to manufacture madmen.

  Thomas Szasz

  Religious, Next, Physicians

  "The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1970.

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• The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which, escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism of atheists .

  John Maynard Keynes

  Atheist, Character, Escaping

  John Maynard Keynes (2016). “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”, p.15, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Absolutists frighten me. During all the endless discussions on my blog about evolution, intelligent design, God, and the afterworld, numbering altogether thousands of comments, I have never named my beliefs, although readers have freely informed me that I am an atheist, and agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist - which I am.

  Roger Ebert

  Atheist, Intelligent, Design

  "Life Itself : A Memoir". Book by Roger Ebert, 2011.

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• Music [is] a science peculiarly productive of a pleasure that no state of life, publick or private, secular or sacred; no difference of age or season; no temper of mind or condition of health exempt from present anguish; nor, lastly, distinction of quality, renders either improper, untimely, or unentertaining.

  Samuel Pepys

  Differences, Mind, Age

  Samuel Pepys, Robert Latham (1983). “The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Companion”, p.259, Univ of California Press

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• If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature - the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society - it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what's there.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Secular Society, Tasks

  "Styles of Radical Will" by Susan Sontag, (p. 45), 1966.

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• Secular progressivism, which attempts to remove God from the public square, is not consistent with the principles that established the USA.

  Benjamin Carson

  Squares, Usa, Principles

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• The Angels shows are really intense. We play for a couple hours at a time. They're very theatrical and full of audience interaction and emotion. I've seen a lot of people crying and stuff. It's a little bit like church, but it's very secular.

  Tom DeLonge

  Couple, Angel, Play

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• But when we reduce sex to a function, we also invoke the idea of dysfunction. We are no longer talking about the art of sex; rather, we are talking about the mechanics of sex. Science has replaced religion as the authority; and science is a more formidable arbiter. Medicine knows how to scare even those who scoff at religion. Compared with a diagnosis, what's a mere sin? We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.

  Esther Perel

  Religious, Art, Sex

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• Iraq's always been very secular.

  William Kristol

  Iraq

  "Christofer Cerf and Victor Navasky on Iraq". "Bill Moyers Journal", billmoyers.com. May 2, 2008.

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• This is what is meant by "sacrifice", literally, the "making sacred" of an animal consumed for dinner. Yet sacrfice, because it dwells on the death, is a concept often shocking to the secular modern Western mind - to people who calmly organize daily hecatombs of beasts, and who are among the most death-dealing carnivores the world has ever seen.

  Margaret Visser

  Food, Sacrifice, Animal

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• When I was in my early teens, I joined a cult. And we weren't allowed to listen to secular music or anything that wasn't made by us. So I spent a lot of time not listening to music, and by the time I could, I just didn't get into it.

  Natalia Kills

  Secular Music, Listening, Teens

  "A Moment With Natalia Kills". Interview with Romy Oltuski, www.harpersbazaar.com. February 28, 2014.

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• Secular artists see themselves with performance; they are more self involved, presentational.

  Boris Kodjoe

  Artist, Self, Performances

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• The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists.

  Boris Kodjoe

  Moving, Artist, People

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• How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

  Yann Martel

  Art, Self, Evil

  "Third time lucky" by Aida Edemariam, www.theguardian.com. October 22, 2002.

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• So here we have found a means of a) alienating even the most flexible and patient Palestinians; while b) frustrating the efforts of the more principled and compromising Israelis; while c) empowering and financing some of the creepiest forces in American and Israeli society; and d) heaping ordure on our own secular founding documents. When will the Justice Department and the Congress and the Supreme Court become aware of this huge and rank offense, which is designed to bring us ever nearer to holy war?

  Christopher Hitchens

  War, Mean, Justice

  "Your Tax Dollars at Work - in West Bank Settlements" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. July 12, 2010.

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• The focus of my research is how secular movements originated in West Asian countries and subsequently changed to pan-Islamic movements. The role of Western countries in this aspect is also a part of the research.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Country, Islamic, Focus

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• Faith is not imparted like secular subjects. It is given through the language of the heart.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Faith, Heart, Religion

  Mahatma Gandhi (1959). “India of My Dreams”, p.244, Rajpal & Sons

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• The safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Exercise, Men, Thinking

  "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" by Baruch Spinoza, ch. 20, 1677.

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• Secular humanism debases the human.

  Sinclair B. Ferguson

  Secular Humanism, Humans, Humanism

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• I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head.

  A.C. Grayling

  Fall, Writing, Science

  "This much I know". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. July 4, 2009.

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• I sometimes think that Thomas Cook should be numbered among the secular saints. He took travel from the privileged and gave it to the people.

  Robert Runcie

  Thinking, People, Saint

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• Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, "It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever." That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope.

  Cornel West

  Believe, Odds, People

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