SOME QUOTES, REMEMBERING THAT QUOTES ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR REAL READING AND HARD THINKING

 

 

A.  RELIGION/ THEOLOGY/ ETHICS AND POLITICS

 

 

"Don't worry folks, like all True Christians®, we will still take everything in the Bible literally, except the teachings of Jesus Christ. Anyone who would turn the other cheek after what happened on September 11th should be shot dead or crucified. As American Christians, we don't give away our possessions to the poor, we don't hate our mothers and fathers, and at this point, Jesus' command to 'love our enemies' just sounds even more like the talk of a sissy than it ever did."

 

- Landover Baptist Website (www.landoverbaptist.org)

 

"If you don't think that the gang of state strapping a woman down to a table and injecting poison into her veins isn't an evil act, then you, your God and your entire belief system are crap. If this is not evil in your social paradigm, then your society is crap.
The gang of state executed Jesus Christ.
The gang of state executed 5 million Jews.
The gang of state virtually exterminated the native American.
On and on and on...
The abuses of power, by the gang of state, are innumerable and indescribably heinous in their abuse of humanity.
And, you continue to enable this abuse... "

- Phil Porter, http://www.mindspring.com/~phporter/econ.html

 

 

"Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God."

 

- 1 Peter 1, The Message

 

 

 

B.  THE HUMAN CONDITION: Love and Loss

 

 

"... a delicate poise between friendship and love - that period in the history of a love when alone it can be said to be unalloyed with pain."

 

- Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, p. 200

 

 

'There are people like Kafka for whom existence is an entanglement, a permanent state of war... '

 

- Brian Aldiss, 'F.O.A.M'

 

 

'WARNING: This gallery contains nudity and representations of death.'

 

- Melbourne Museum sign

 

 

"The fulfillment of desire is the death of desire."

 

- John Fowles, Afterword to Le Grande Meaulnes

 

 

 

 

C.  MANIFESTOS

 

 

"Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight!"

 

- Dylan Thomas, 'Do not go gently into the night'

 

 

"A hero's coming who, in a restless rage, shall tear meaning we take to be the face of things off like a mask and reveal us faces whose mute eyes have long been gazing at us through dissembling holes."

 

- Rilke, 'Requiem'

 

 

"To hell with your bricks and mortar -

It's you and me and the Holy Ghost

On the road to dawn along the coast

You're better sorry than safe

When you count the cost."

 

- The Whitlams, 'Thank You'

 

 

 

D.  ART AND THE ARTISTS

 

 

"I had not then realised that loss is essential for the novelist, immensely fertile for his books, however painful for his private being."

 

- John Fowles, foreword to The Magus (Rev Edn)