#martyrs

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

#death #love #martyrs #men #prophets

All religions have periods in their history which are looked back to with retrospective fear and trembling as eras of persecution, and each religion has its own book of martyrs. ↗

— Richard Le Gallienne

#book #each #eras #fear #history

I am telling you before anything, that the blood of the martyrs and the injured will not go in vain. And I would like to affirm, I will not hesitate to punish those who are responsible fiercely. I will hold those in charge who have violated the rights of our youth with the harshest punishment stipulated in the law. ↗

— Hosni Mubarak

#am #anything #before #blood #charge

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never. ↗

— Albert Camus

#being forgotten #between #choose #forgotten #friend

I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike. ↗

— Mary Harris Jones

#children #clothes #dead #despair #desperate

They're not put on earth to be martyrs; they have to want to come out. It depends on your culture, where you work, where you live. Each person's circumstances are unique. ↗

— Billie Jean King

#come #culture #depends #each #earth

I could have been 23 next July I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost. ↗

— Hannah Senesh

#last-words #martyrs #poetry #life

It's an insidious idea, this notion that there is life after death. The promise of a reward in the afterlife has been used as an excuse to deny help to the poor, helpless and oppressed; to explain away human misery rather than deal with it. It is an idea that is used to encourage young men and women to kill themselves, and others, so that they can become martyrs. It allows victims of injustice to be told not to worry because justice will be done in the afterlife. It depresses me to think that so many people on the planet live their lives with this notion. Can we truly fulfill our potential as a species as long as we hold on to, and encourage, the perpetuation of the lie of life after death? ↗

— Alom Shaha

#atheism #injustice #justice #life-after-death #martyrs

The faithful clamoured to be buried alongside the martyrs, as close as possible to the venerable remains, a custom which, in anthropological terms, recalls Neolithic beliefs that certain human remains possessed supernatural properties. It was believed that canonized saints did not rot, like lesser mortals, but that their corpses were miraculously preserved and emanated an odour of sanctity, a sweet, floral smell, for years after death. In forensic terms, such preservation is likely to be a result of natural mummification in hot, dry conditions. ↗

— Catharine Arnold

#death #martyrs #preservation #saints #sanctity

We can always be sure of one thing—that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. This is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#bible #brave-new-world #history #martyrs #old-testament