Category Archives: Quotes

C.S. Lewis on classic books

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“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”
— C.S. Lewis

John C. Wright on Social Justice McCarthyites

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John C. Wright on Social Justice McCarthyites:

“The honest Leftists want to see the bridge crew of the Starship Enterprise, oriental and occidental, male and female, white and black, including a Russian, a Scotchman, and a Vulcan thrown in for spice.

The SJWs [Social Justice Warriors] want Kirk humiliated and forgotten, and then the rest of the crew dead, until only Uhura of planet Twofer is left…”

Interesting observation about how the Left continues to fight previous (social) wars:

“The Leftwing are trying to free the slaves that have already been freed, and shatter the sexual morals of the Victorians, which have been in tatters for over half a century, and reform industrial-labor relations that had been reformed successfully and nonviolently since roughly half a century before Marx took up his pen to complain about them. The miserable working conditions of the factory system in England, which was hardly a free market, were old news and out of date from even before Marx’s time.”

John C. Wright on atheism

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“Without God, you either end up as a Stoic, a man who is bitter but does his duty without complaint, or as a Hedonist, a man who seeks ever fewer false pleasures with ever more fervor and ever less reward. At the end of either the Stoic road or the Hedonist treadmill is the same void, which can be filled only with wrath or sorrow. Read Homer. Read the writings of the Buddhists. Pagans are a grim people. They talk about resignation, renunciation, loss, sorrow, defeat, and the futility of pride. Atheists have not even the comforts of paganism.”
— John C. Wright

Amusing Twitter quotes

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Benjamin Franklin on militant atheism

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Benjamin Franklin on militant atheism

“But, were you to succeed [in creating an atheist society], do you imagine any good would be done by it? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. For among us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.”
— Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Paine, regarding the latter’s rhetorical attacks on Christianity

Scott Alexander on demonization

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“If we’ve learned anything from the Star Wars prequels, it’s that Anakin Skywalker is unbearably annoying. But if we’ve learned two things from the Star Wars prequels, it’s that the easiest way to marginalize the legitimate concerns of anyone who stands in your way is to declare them oppressors loud enough to scare everyone who listens.”
— Scott Alexander