no. 343

“They introduce themselves as pro-life. And I say, ‘Oh, I’m so glad. You must be fighting for healthcare for the poor.’ And they look at me like I’m bonkers.”

Sheila Walsh, a Catholic nun

no. 324

"If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

no. 321

"Seven blunders of the world lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character. commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle."

Mahatma Gandhi

no. 302

"The problem w/ the Zimmerman verdict isn’t that he got away with murder. It’s that even in 2013, citizens of society refuse to be humble, to be teachable, to be pliable. Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. Society has consistently fallen short of truly being human. Coercion replaces compassion; fear replaces love; complacency replaces being proactive. People have resolved that 'this is just the way it is', shrug their shoulders, and move on with the life, leaving the grieving families of displaced, misplaced, replaced, and dead children in the wake, then they wonder why 'kids these days' never learn. Who’s teaching them to be unteachable? Who’s teaching them to be passive and aggressive in the wrong areas of life? Who’s teaching them that murder is okay, sex tapes are the norm and will make you a lot of money, and selling your soul for a reality show is the ultimate goal in life? Who’s teaching them that more time & money are spent on trying to be pretty, in-shape, attractive, and/or appealing to the masses, rather than teaching them humility, generosity, compassion, and love? A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve."

iv

via

no. 299

"If girls are asking to be raped because their clothes don't completely cover all of their bodies, then boys are asking to be kicked in the balls just because they don't wear cups everywhere."

iseeavoice

via

no. 297

"The invisible hand does indeed allocate the efforts of private industry to the best possible uses, as long as 'best' and 'most profitable' can be used interchangeably."

Gin and Tacos, from the post Better Living Through Chemistry, or: Thanks, Free Market!

no. 284

via

no. 278

"U.S.A: Where abortion is murder and the murder of Black people isn’t."

Socialism Art Nature

no. 268

"Personal's not the same as important. People just think it is."

Granny Weatherwax, in Terry Pratchett's Lords And Ladies

no. 257

Louis CK

no. 249

"Be of service. You are taking your degree into a society dominated by concentrated poverty and a vulnerable middle class, a society where it is harder to pay for education, harder to find a job, harder to buy a house and harder to hold onto those things even if you manage to get them. You are entering adulthood during a period of mass incarceration and near constant war. There is a lot for you to do. Service is the rent you pay for the space you take up on the earth, and as a relatively privileged American you take up a lot of space. We are the most consuming, polluting, wasteful nation on earth. So your rent is steep. Pay it with service."

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry’s advice to Class of 2013

via

no. 245

Abortion seems to be the only medical procedure that people want to deny you based on how you got in that situation.
Drove drunk, got in an accident and need an organ transplant? No problem.
Messing around with a gun, accidentally shoot yourself in the leg and need surgery? Of course.
Smoke tobacco for most of your life and need treatment for lung cancer? Yep.
Climb a tree, fall out and break your leg? We’ll fix that right up.
Have sex and get pregnant when you don’t want to be? YOU GOT YOURSELF INTO THIS SITUATION AND YOU DESERVE NO MEDICAL HELP OR COMPASSION! THIS IS YOUR FAULT AND YOU WILL DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES!

Antiprolife at Worry About Your Own Uterus

via

no. 202

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed”.

Albert Einstein

(well, sorta)

no. 175

"Keep it in mind while we review what it means to live in a civil society.
Murder. Violence...
These are things. They exist.

Then you have ideas. Justice, ethics, morality... our law...
These exist because of us. Because we want more than a life defined by murder or violence."


Pat Mulcahy in A Girl And Her Fed

no. 157

"Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world."

Edited on Tue Nov-29-11 12:49 PM by WilliamPitt
Credited to Jim Truther on Facebook

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no. 127

no. 101

"God’s standards are absolute. They do not change."

my friend Gerald quoting that sunday's sermon on his Facebook page. I wanted to reply (but was too polite to do so), "it's a good thing that God's omniscient - he can afford to be absolute". I, personally, am not that sure of myself, nor should any non-God be.

no. 72

"…there are a few other reasons why we clearly don’t get our morality from religion…even fundamentalists have to edit the books.

You come to the golden rule and you say, well this is truly wise…that’s why I’m reading the bible…but if you come something in Deuteronomy(22:13-21) like,

'If a woman’s not a virgin on her wedding night, you must take her to her father’s doorstep and stone her to death.'

…every fundamentalist Christian and Orthodox Jew…has figured out some way to ignore that…[which] proves that the guarantor of the wisdom found in scripture is not in scripture.

Maybe it’s in us."

— Sam Harris, lecturing on The Moral Landscape

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