#secular

Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself. ↗

— Emma Goldman

#atheism #bravery #secular #change

I actually share her view and understand her frustration when any government attempts to ban secular symbols like Santa Claus or Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer or Christmas lights. ↗

— Steve Israel

#any #attempts #ban #christmas #claus

Well, in The Chosen, Danny Saunders, from the heart of his religious reading of the world, encounters an element in the very heart of the secular readings of the world - Freudian psychoanalytic theory. ↗

— Chaim Potok

#danny #element #encounters #freudian #heart

The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism. ↗

— Dennis Prager

#muslim #muslim world #religious #secular #threatened

I believe that pluralistic secularism, in the long run, is a more deadly poison than straightforward persecution. ↗

— Francis Schaeffer

#deadly #i #i believe #i believe that #long

Psychologists have set about describing the true nature of women with a certainty and a sense of their own infallibility rarely found in the secular world. ↗

— Naomi Weisstein

#certainty #describing #found #infallibility #nature

If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern! ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#dictatorship #gandhi #politics #privacy #religion

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#atheism #humanism #secularism #humans

All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is—marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#intelligence

In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith. ↗

— John Taylor Gatto

#public-education #schooling #secularism #education