On my desktop I keep a word document that i randomly cut and paste quotes i see on the net into. THought i'd share a few (mostly xian ones though):

quote:Here's how a conservative justifies his hatred and prejudice of anyone who disagrees with him, or has a different lifestyle to him, by using the Bible:

They take a pair of scissors, and some glue, and a Bible.

They search through the Bible for any verse that can possibly, even distantly, be made to agree with their prejudices. They cut that verse out.

They find another verse that could, if read their way, be made to agree with their prejudices. They cut that out.

These verses are taken from widely disparate and seperated books in the Bible, written in widely different styles and with widely different historical, literary and cultural contexts. All this is ignored by the conservative, because the conservative isn't reading to find out what the text says. The conservative is reading to confirm his own prejudices.

With the glue, they paste these disparate verses together. Lo and Behold, they fit. Or rather, they have been made to fit by people who've already decided what they mean beforehand.

This is known as the "cut and paste" method, or "proof-texting." Search the scriptures, not for what it says, but for what you want it to say, and it will always come up trumps. Want to say that rock-and-roll is bad? Just snip a verse here, snip a verse there, case proved. Never mind that rock-and-roll in the Bible would be an anachronism; just ignore the context and style of writing, or the theme of any particular book or passage. Ignore anything that doesn't confirm your prejudices.

Lo and behold, you can bible-bash gay people till your heart's content. You can even justify the murder of gay people, because you have already decided that your (snip-snip) view of the Bible is the correct one, and people who've never done you any harm, who live quiet lives like the rest of us, must be evil, because you've decided the Bible says so.

That the same cut-and-paste method of using the Bible is used by every heresy since Christendom began, passes you by. Because you've decided to read the Bible, not to discover it, not to find out what it might have to say to challenge you and your life, but as a weapon to beat others you don't like with.

Whited sepulchres comes to mind, full of dry bones and death



quote:"I would rather see Ronald McDonald in the White House. At least we`d all get a happymeal and a toy."



quote:"If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437

"Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, 1890



quote:"Who stands his ground? Only the man whose ultimate criterion is not in his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these things when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and exclusive allegiance to God." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer



quote:When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?" -- Quentin Crisp

Our pasta is like our rhetoric, only good for filling up our mouths. It's enjoyment lies entirely in the way it forces the jaws wide open, the way it demands voluptuous self-abandonment, the way it sticks to the palate and to the intestines, the way the eater feels he has become one with it, knotted into a sticky ball and re-fashioned. But it's a piggish enjoyment. It's a short lived bliss. We suddenly feel as leaden as false coins. We have no more easy syllables or ready images. Our thoughts wind round each other, get mixed up and tangled like the vermicelli we've taken in. Heaven help us if we are about to enter a discussion or join a lover. Rhymes are fatuous, witticisms cretinous, reasoning impossible when tremors of the bowel disturb them. We know that sins of the gullet are the most quickly punished. The sin of pasta is expiated instantly. The stomach expands at the expense of the brain.

-Rampereti

The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittenly conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.

-George Orwell in 1984

I don’t come to bow, I come to conquer

-Anon

"It is easy to remove the mind from harping on the lost illusion of immortality. The disciplined intellect fears nothing and craves no sugar-plum at the day's end, but is content to accept life and serve society as best it may.

Personally I would not care for immortality in the least. There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled. We had it before we were born, yet did not complain. Shall we whine because we know it will return? It is Elysium enough for me, at any rate."

-H. P. Lovecraft, In Defense of Dagon

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

- Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

"Morality is a losing proposition - its slow, and it no longer matters. All that you can afford to be nowadays is quick and deadly."

- Unknown

Will post others later.

Death is but a door, Time is but a window. I'll be back - Viggo the Carpathian

"And you, too, who are moral enough in your conversation, and regular in your attendance on the outward forms of religion, you who never weep over sinners, you who never pray for them, you who never speak to them, you who leave all that to your minister, and think you have nothing to do with it, the voice of your brother's blood crieth from the ground to heaven"~~Charles Spurgeon

___________________________________________

Proverbs 12:22 Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.

__________________________________________

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount... The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.~~~~Gen. Omar Bradley

quote:Originally posted by theBishop:

Death is but a door, Time is but a window. I'll be back - Viggo the Carpathian

I like.

quote:Originally posted by manjiBoy:

Our pasta is like our rhetoric, only good for filling up our mouths. It's enjoyment lies entirely in the way it forces the jaws wide open, the way it demands voluptuous self-abandonment, the way it sticks to the palate and to the intestines, the way the eater feels he has become one with it, knotted into a sticky ball and re-fashioned. But it's a piggish enjoyment. It's a short lived bliss. We suddenly feel as leaden as false coins. We have no more easy syllables or ready images. Our thoughts wind round each other, get mixed up and tangled like the vermicelli we've taken in. Heaven help us if we are about to enter a discussion or join a lover. Rhymes are fatuous, witticisms cretinous, reasoning impossible when tremors of the bowel disturb them. We know that sins of the gullet are the most quickly punished. The sin of pasta is expiated instantly. The stomach expands at the expense of the brain.

-Rampereti

That's excellent