We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.
Things sacred should not only be touched with the hands, but unviolated in thought.
[Lat., Res sacros non modo manibus attingi, sed ne cogitatione quidem violari fas fuit.]
God is a too palpably clumsy answer; an answer which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers-fundamentally, even a crude prohibition to us: you shall not think!
I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter. Far more important is that they be a good human being.
Science is about finding ever better approximations rather than pretending you have already found ultimate truth.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.
In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. . . . There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; . . . she was doing in all this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery.