Quotes

We know they are lying,
they know they are lying,
they know we know they are lying,
we know they know we know they are lying,
but they are still lying.

Attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (quite similar to a quote by Elena Gorokhova, from A Mountain of Crumbs, on the Soviet government)

Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008), Wikipedia

The institutions of liberal democracy that we talk about, and a lot of these checks and balances and a lot of those things we cherish; there are ways in which they had failed that we need to figure out how to both fix and improve, because that failure is what opens up the path to this kind of populism.

Zeynep Tüfekci, associate professor, University of North Carolina, commenting on four years with Trump in the USA, NRK Urix, 11.11.2020 (10:40)

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.

G.K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Nations do not die from invasion; they die from internal rottenness.

Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

False beliefs are not small things, because they lead to false solutions.

Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World - An Empirical Study (page 185)

The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer - and they don't want explanations that do not give them that.

Thomas Sowell, Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays

The Road Carrying the Jewel of Truth.

Old Chinese name for the Silk Road

Just like junk food doesn't meet your nutritional needs [...], junk values don't meet your psychological needs.

Johann Hari, TEDSummit, July 2019, This could be why you're depressed or anxious

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

Attributed to William James (and others)

"There was a proposal to isolate people coming from the epicenter, coming from China," [Dr. Giorgio Palù, the former president of the European and Italian Society for Virology and a professor of virology and microbiology of the University of Padova] said. "Then it became seen as racist, but they were people coming from the outbreak." That, he said, led to the current devastating situation.

Italian doctors hope for a sign the coronavirus lockdown is working, because there's no plan B, CNN, 19.03.2020

But arguably the greatest danger is that the failure of modernity has given birth to a philosophy that threatens a comple breakdown of society. Postmodernism has entered the mainstream of the West and is disintegrating the social order;

Ahmed Paul Keeler, Rethinking Islam and The West: A New Narrative for The Age of Crises (page 176)

The problem is, people are being hated when they are real, and are being loved when they are fake.

Bob Marley (1945 - 1981)

Some people are so poor - all they have is money.

Bob Marley (1945 - 1981)

Cannibalism is not a matter of taste.

Leo Strauss (1899 - 1973), quoted by Joram van Klaveren, Apostate - from Christianity to Islam in times of secularisation and terror (page 38)

I think there is a very big difference between US and Canada, who are immigrant countries, and countries like Norway and probably Austria and others, who have, you know, people have been living there for thousands of years. But I think that we have the same core. The same core is that if you believe in your Western ideas, you should believe that everybody is equal. That you don't have any special rights because your parents have been living here forever. [...] We don't have other rights than [other] people who are [now] living [in Norway].

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, at Munich Security Conference (transcript), 14.02.2020

Hear this, young men and women everywhere, and proclaim it far and wide. The earth is yours and the fullness thereof. Be kind, but be fierce. You are needed now more than ever before. Take up the mantle of change, for this is your time.

Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965), abridged quote

Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously.

Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (page 196)

A person can and should be loyal simultaneously to her family, her neighbourhood, her profession and her nation - why not add humankind and planet Earth to the list? True, when you have multiple loyalties, conflicts are sometimes inevitable. But then who said life was simple? Deal with it.

Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (page 125)

Coming back from the realm of fiction to the realm of facts, we see that the European debate about immigration is far from being a clear-cut battle between good and evil. It would be wrong to tar all anti-immigrationists as 'fascists', just as it would be wrong to depict all pro-immigrationists as committed to 'cultural suicide'. Therefore, the debate about immigration should not be conducted as an uncompromising struggle about some non-negotiable moral imperative. It is a discussion between two legitimate political positions, which should be decided through standard democratic procedures.

Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (page 154)

Fascism is what happens when nationalism wants to make life too easy for itself by denying all other identities and obligations. There has been a lot of confusion lately about the exact meaning of fascism. People call almost anyone they don't like 'a fascist'. The term is in danger of degenerating into an all-purpose term of abuse. So what does it really mean? In brief, while nationalism teaches me that my nation is unique and that I have special obligations towards it, fascism says that my nation is supreme, and that I owe my nation exclusive obligations.

Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (page 292 - 293)

My students ... are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture ... The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West.

Patrick Deneen, How a Generation Lost Its Common Culture, 02.02.2016, Minding the Campus

Rigid denial doesn't work. It's unsustainable - for individuals, for families, for societies, and [...] for our planet.

Psychologist Susan David, TED talk, November 2017

A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims... but accomplices.

George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.

Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement. Too much national pride can produce bellicosity and imperialism, just as excessive self-respect can produce arrogance. But just as too little self-respect makes it difficult for a person to display moral courage so insufficient national pride makes energetic and effective debate about national policy unlikely. Emotional involvement with one's country-feelings of intense shame or of glowing pride aroused by various parts of its history, and by various present-day national policies-is necessary if political deliberation is to be imaginative and productive. Such deliberation will probably not occur unless pride outweighs shame…

Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007), in Achieving Our Country

I have deep sympathy for the concern that genetic discoveries could be misused to justify racism. But as a geneticist I also know that it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among "races."

David Reich, How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race', The New York Times, 23.03.2018

With the help of these [DNA sequencing] tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today's racial constructs are real.

David Reich, How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race', The New York Times, 23.03.2018

I am worried that well-meaning people who deny the possibility of substantial biological differences among human populations are digging themselves into an indefensible position, one that will not survive the onslaught of science.

David Reich, How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race', The New York Times, 23.03.2018

This is why knowledgeable scientists must speak out. If we abstain from laying out a rational framework for discussing differences among populations, we risk losing the trust of the public and we actively contribute to the distrust of expertise that is now so prevalent.

David Reich, How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race', The New York Times, 23.03.2018

[He was] impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance.

Graham Greene, of his character Pyle («The Quiet American»)

In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it.

G.K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936), in Fancies Versus Fads

[Jordan Peterson's] work and views are not representative of the student body and as such we do not see his visit as a valuable contribution to the University, but one that works in opposition to the principles of the University.

Cambridge University students' union, Cambridge University rescinds Jordan Peterson invitation, The Guardian, 20.03.2019

Our world is replete with complex matters that need discussing. We need philosophers, thinkers and even politicians of courage to help us find our way through this. We live in the age of character assassination. What we now desperately need is a counter-revolution based on the importance of individuals over mobs, the primacy of truth over offence, and the necessity of free-thought over this bland, dumb and ill-conceived uniformity.

Douglas Murray, The Scruton tapes: an anatomy of a modern hit job, The Spectator, 27.04.2019

Conversely, a society cut off from God quickly turns into a dictatorship and becomes a structure of sin, encouraging people toward evil. That is why we can say that there can be no just society without a place for God in the public sphere. A state that officially espouses atheism is an unjust state. A state that relegates God to the private sphere cuts itself off from the true source of rights and justice. A state that pretends to found rights on good will alone, and does not seek to found the law on an objective order received from the Creator, risks falling into totalitarianism.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, interviewed by the Catholic Herald, 'As a bishop, it is my duty to warn the West', 05.04.2019

A freedom that is not itself oriented and guided by truth is nonsensical. [...] I believe that the opposition between truth and freedom is the fruit of a false conception of human dignity. Modern man hypostatizes his freedom, making it an absolute to the point of believing that it is threatened when he accepts the truth. However, to accept the truth is the most beautiful act of freedom that man can perform. I believe that your question reveals how deeply the crisis of the Western conscience is really in the end a crisis of faith. Western man is afraid of losing his freedom by accepting the gift of true faith. He prefers to close himself up inside a freedom that is devoid of content. The act of faith is an encounter between freedom and truth. [...] Our freedom comes to fulfillment when it says "yes" to revealed truth. If freedom says "no" to God, it denies itself. It asphyxiates.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, interviewed by the Catholic Herald, 'As a bishop, it is my duty to warn the West', 05.04.2019

I am convinced that western civilization is passing at present through a mortal crisis. It has reached the extreme of self-destructive hate. [...] To the countries of the third world, the West is held out as a paradise because it is ruled by commercial liberalism. This encourages the flow of migrants, so tragic for the identity of peoples. A West that denies its faith, its history, its roots, and its identity is destined for contempt, for death, and disappearance.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, interviewed by the Catholic Herald, 'As a bishop, it is my duty to warn the West', 05.04.2019

With all this, [remember that] those who are bent on denying the truth are allies of one another; and unless you act likewise [among yourselves], oppression will reign on earth, and great corruption.

Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur'an, 8:73

You don't think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.

Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian Henry Nouwen (1932 - 1996)

I contend that every educated person should be conversant with the sacred texts, rituals, and symbol systems of the great world religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, and Islam — and that true global understanding is impossible without such knowledge.

Professor Camille Paglia, Hillary wants Trump to win again, The Spectator, 04.12.2018

[Jordan] Peterson's immense international popularity demonstrates the hunger for meaning among young people today. Defrauded of a genuine humanistic education, they are recognizing the spiritual impoverishment of their crudely politicized culture, choked with jargon, propaganda, and lies.

Professor Camille Paglia, Hillary wants Trump to win again, The Spectator, 04.12.2018

We hate each other. It's no longer a matter of incivility; it's open hostility, visceral loathing. Extreme intolerance of anyone who challenges our perception of the truth.

Editor Nolan Finley, Be honest, we hate each other, The Detroit News, 27.10.2018

Too many Democrats are drenched in self-righteousness, convinced of their superiority over the deplorable masses. They can't grasp that intelligent people can look at the same set of facts, apply to them their own values and experiences, and come up with different opinions.

Editor Nolan Finley, Be honest, we hate each other, The Detroit News, 27.10.2018

The possibility they might be wrong, or there is any validity in contrary views, or those who disagree with them aren't evil or ignorant or cowed by their husbands, is unfathomable. They are too smug to harbor self-doubt.

Editor Nolan Finley, Be honest, we hate each other, The Detroit News, 27.10.2018

Their resistance has morphed from opposing policies and appointees to undermining the presidency to, now, the formation of mobs. And they justify it, as Hillary Clinton articulated last week, because conservatives have a different vision for the country than they do.

Editor Nolan Finley, Be honest, we hate each other, The Detroit News, 27.10.2018

I reject tyrannical groupthink. I reject a system which allows an ambitious, misinformed, and dogmatic mob to suppress free speech, create false narratives, and then apathetically steamroll over the truth.

Brandon Straka, Why I left the Democratic Party, YouTube, 29.06.2018

I reject the acceptance of junk science and superstition to advance ideological agendas. I reject hate.

Brandon Straka, Why I left the Democratic Party, YouTube, 29.06.2018

The left now believes that there are no boundaries when telling lies, omitting the truth, or misrepresenting facts while reporting the news, because their end justifies their means.

Brandon Straka, Why I left the Democratic Party, YouTube, 29.06.2018

Get out!

Member of Dutch Parliament and leader of the immigrant party DENK Tunahan Kuzu, making a statement about Dutch who are concerned about the prospect of becoming a minority in their own country, july 2018

Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls. There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?

Labour MP Sarah Champion quoted by Tom Goodenough, Sarah Champion's resignation over grooming gang comments bodes ill for state of debate in Labour, The Spectator, 2017/08

For too long we have ignored the race of these abusers and, worse, tried to cover it up. No more. These people are predators and the common denominator is their ethnic heritage.

Labour MP Sarah Champion quoted by Tom Goodenough, Sarah Champion's resignation over grooming gang comments bodes ill for state of debate in Labour, The Spectator, 2017/08

What is the opposite of Diversity? University!

Kate McMillan, founder of Small Dead Animals

It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict, God's job to judge and my job to love.

Billy Graham (1918 -2018), quoted by Relevant Magazine, 21.02.2018

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

Rousseau

More horrifying than a defeat of arms is a collapse of the human spirit.

Bishop Michael Kozal (1893 - 1943)

The West is strong militarily, but weak ideologically. It lacks civilizational confidence. It is not sure if it has anything worth defending. [...] the West has raised a generation of social justice warriors who are convinced that their own civilization deserves to be eliminated.

William Kilpatrick, Crisis Magazine, 04.04.2017

#IfIWasPresident I'd oppress white people just to give them a taste of what they put us through! #LMFAO.

President of Salford University's Student Union (since March 2017), Zamzam Ibrahim, Twitter, 09.05.2012 (emphasis in original), quoted e.g. by The Daily Mail, 01.07.2017

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

«The paradox of tolerance», Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945

Someone very profoundly once said many years ago that if fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.

Ronald Reagan, in a 14.12.1975 interview with 60 Minutes

The great political struggle of our times is not between Left and Right. It is between those who are connected to truth, reason and reality and those who are not. It reflects a fundamental division in the West, whose fate will be decided by its outcome.

Melanie Phillips, The west's most fundamental and lethal divide, 09.06.2017

What does it mean that this gender mania is permeating every corner of Western societies and culture? According to Camille Paglia, the contrarian feminist, it is a sign of the decline of Western civilization. In her new book, Free Women, Free Men, she writes: «Civilizations have gone through recurrent cycles. Extravaganzas of gender experimentation sometimes precede cultural collapse, ...»

Giulio Meotti, The Gender Obsessed West Sets Itself Up for the Rise of [Fundamentalist] Islam, Gatestone Institute, 20.05.2017

Obsession with gender is a convenient distraction to avoid facing matters that are more difficult and less pleasant. There is a saying that civilizations can be destroyed from within, rather than by armies from without. If the West will not commit itself to preserving Western societies and values, it will fall. And its extraordinary progress will be blanketed over by darkness, along with all those gender rights.

Giulio Meotti, The Gender Obsessed West Sets Itself Up for the Rise of [Fundamentalist] Islam, Gatestone Institute, 20.05.2017

According to Camille Paglia, «a purely secular culture risks hollowness and, paradoxically, sets itself up for the rise of fundamentalist movements that ominously promise to purify and discipline». Such as -- name it -- radical Islam.

Giulio Meotti, The Gender Obsessed West Sets Itself Up for the Rise of [Fundamentalist] Islam, Gatestone Institute, 20.05.2017

In sum, the highly educated, the religiously uncommitted and those who value autonomy across Europe are much more likely to approve of voluntary childlessness.

Population Europe, No Kids, No Problem! - How personal and cultural factors shape attitudes toward voluntary childlessness in Europe

It is that idea of "Western civilisation" that greatly complicates the demographic panic. Without it, the answer would be simple: Europe has no need to worry about finding young people to support its elderly in their declining years. There are plenty of young migrants banging at the gates, trying to climb the razor wire or setting sail on flimsy boats to reach our shores. All we need to do is let them in.

Dennis Sewell, The new population bomb, The Catholic Herald, 16.03.2017

We cannot see a connection between crimes and immigration.

Sweden's Minister of Integration, Ylva Johansson, interviewed by BBC, March 2017

Just a piece of friendly advice: when you are in a hole, stop digging.

Sweden's former prime minister Carl Bildt, venting his frustration, Twitter, 20.02.2017

We look forward to informing the US administration about Swedish immigration and integration policies.

Embassy of Sweden US, Twitter, 20.02.2017

A liberal nationalist can reasonably argue that the debate over immigration policy in Europe is not a case of what is moral versus what is base, but a case of two clashing moral visions, incommensurate (à la Isaiah Berlin). The trick, from this point of view, is figuring out how to balance reasonable concerns about the integrity of one's own community with the obligation to welcome strangers, particularly strangers in dire need.

Jonathan Haidt, When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism - And how moral psychology can help explain and reduce tensions between the two, The American Interest, Volume 12, Number 1, July 2016

We have the problem that we are too close to the government. The topics we cover are determined by the government. But many of the topics the government wants to prevent us from reporting about are more important than the topics they want us to cover... We must report in such a way that serves Europe [the European Union] and the common good, as it pleases Mrs. Merkel. There are written instructions ... today we are not allowed to say anything negative about the refugees. This is government journalism, and this leads to a situation in which the public loses their trust in us. This is scandalous.

Retired public media personality Wolfgang Herles, in an interview with the German public radio, Deutschlandfunk, 26.01.2016, quoted by Soeren Kern at Gatestone Institute

In this era of post-truth politics, it's easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire.

Oxford Dictionaries, example of use, post-truth

Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief

Oxford Dictionaries, defining «post-truth», Word of the Year 2016

If you are a citizen of the world, then you are a citizen of nowhere.

Theresa May, quoted by Rod Liddle in The Spectator, 15.10.2016

To reach the unification with God, to the degree this is possible in this life, a continuous exertion is required, or, specifically, an unceasing vigil to preserve the integrity of the inward man, so «the unity between heart and spirit» might withstand the assaults of the enemy and the irrational inclinations of the fallen nature.

Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, page 16

Sin is a disease of the will which is deceived, and takes a mere shadow of the good for the good itself.

Gregory of Nyssa (circa 335 - 395), quoted by Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, page 128

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.

Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), Russian poet and author

Our whiteness is that poisonous sky right before it rains, the color of shame.

Eve Ensler, It's time for white people to reckon with racism, The Guardian, 11.07.2016

A sizable portion of the establishment liberal commentariat in the West has completely lost the ability to engage with any sort of dissent from its orthodoxies or even understand those who disagree. They are capable of nothing beyond adopting the smuggest, most self-satisfied posture, then spouting clichés to dismiss their critics as ignorant, benighted bigots. Like the people of the West who bomb Muslim countries and then express confusion that anyone wants to attack them back, the most simple-minded of these establishment media liberals are constantly enraged that the people they endlessly malign as ignorant haters refuse to vest them with the respect and credibility to which they are naturally entitled.

Glenn Greenwald, Brexit Is Only the Latest Proof of the Insularity and Failure of Western Establishment Institutions, The Intercept, 25.06.2016

We will need to grapple with this question: Why do so many European Muslims not feel European?

Iyad El-Baghdadi, These terrorists are not «foreigners» from «out there», Aftenposten, 22.03.2016

We must accept that refugees are more criminal.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, statement on TV, January 2016

We live in a time when men, driven by mediocre, ferocious ideologies, are becoming used to being ashamed of everything. Ashamed of themselves, ashamed to be happy, to love and to create…. So we have to feel guilty. We are being dragged before the secular confessional, the worst of all.

Albert Camus, Actuelles, Écrits politiques (1948), quoted in The Tyranny of Guilt, by Pascal Bruckner

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the carrier of the plague.

Often attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero (107-44 BCE), but spoken in 1965 by Florida Supreme Court Justice Millard F. Caldwell (1897-1984), inspired by Cicero

My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others’ agony. If I could peel myself inside out I would be glad. If I could become part of the oppressed I would be free.

Robin Morgan, key radical feminist member of the American Women’s Movement, quoted by IFNM

This is not ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It is all about Islam.

Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary, commenting on the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, quoted by Rod Liddle, The Islamic world is rioting – and not for free speech, The Spectator, 24.01.2015

So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill.

From the concluding words of 138 Muslim scholars in their open letter to Christians, A Common Word between Us and You, 2007

A man who arbitrarily imprisons me or confiscates my property is a tyrant. Institutions and general ways of thinking that destroy the social institutions and relationships that make me what I am; that attack the family and abolish gender distinctions, communal ties, and traditional moral standards; that drive religion out of public life and tell private associations what members to choose and why - these are also tyrannical.

James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism, page 129-130

The recognition of ethnic and similar distinctions is regarded as extraordinarily dangerous. Those who would abolish them envision no problems should they succeed, as though they served no function and without them people would find nothing to fight over. It should be clear, however, that it is not universal human tendencies like ethnocentrism that are dangerous, but the failure to integrate them with other aspects of life and to restrain them by other considerations. The lessons of the events following the collapse of communism is that the attempt to create a utopia based on eradication of a fundamental impulse - even greed, which some have called the root of all evil - is supremely destructive.

James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism, page 228

The post-liberal future may look rather like post-Soviet Russia, only with less common culture and more varied and numerous Chechens.

James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism, page 255

Christianity succeeded because pagan Roman religion failed to provide a sense of spiritual upliftment. Islam succeeded because the Eastern churches were spiritually debilitated by centuries of bitter polemic. New religious movements in the West succeed by offering techniques of meditation and alternative therapies which seem absent from established religions as they are presently formulated. Islam, wherever it degenerates into a primal scream of panic about one’s situation in the world, will certainly be replaced by any other religion that offers sakina.

Abdal-Hakim Murad, Muslim loyalty and belonging - some reflections on the psychosocial background, January 2003

Those of us who want reform [of Islam] are muted by [Muslim] extremists, as well as the liberals who betray us in the name of multiculturalism. ISIS paints a horrific picture, so I understand the knee-jerk reaction to deny any link. Most Muslims choose to interpret scripture in a peaceful way, but that doesn’t mean the raw material isn’t there for those who choose the path of violence. That material must be addressed.

Eiynah (a Pakistani-Canadian blogger/illustrator who writes about sexuality in Pakistan), An open letter to Ben Affleck, Pakistan Today, 25.10.2014

We can’t go forward without looking backwards.

President Obama, commenting on past human rights abuses in Indonesia, When presidential sermons collide, Salon, 25.03.2010

I’m a strong believer that it’s important to look forward and not backwards.

President Obama, commenting on past human rights abuses in the USA, When presidential sermons collide, Salon, 25.03.2010

There are two fundamentally different conceptions of science – one that is scientific and one that is not. In the first, science properly deals with reality, mostly in its physical manifestations. It tries to understand the things that are - what they are, how they work and why, in terms of efficient causes. Science is not metaphysics, but, in order to work, it must assume that things have ends. Otherwise, what would be the point of investigating them, and how would one go about doing it? It is not science that gives to things their ends; those exist already as part of themselves. Science works with the already existing ends in Nature to held bring them about, to fulfill them. Science is not so much the mastery of Nature as an alliance with it. To succeed, it must work with Nature, not against it. This is particularly true in practical sciences. You cannot heal people if you do not know what health is. As Dr. Leon Kass said, ‘The doctor is the cooperative ally of nature, not its master.’
The other notion of science – the unscientific one – is an endeavor not so much to understand what exists and how to bring it to fruition, but to gain power over and fundamentally transform it. Man becomes the ultimate master through the exercise of his will by the instrument of science; he makes all things new according to his desires. Man’s will ignores the end of things and assigns to them his purpose, and they have purposes only insofar as he assigns them. They are nothing in themselves. Nor is man something in himself but only what he makes himself to be. This is science as ideology, as the construction of a false reality.

Robert R. Reilly, quoted by SydneyTrads

We Muslims must admit there are challenging Koranic passages that require reinterpretation today. Let us use existing tools of exegesis, such as specificity, restriction, abrogation and metaphor. Vacuous literalism as an interpretive method must be abandoned. It is bankrupt. Only by rejecting vacuous literalism are we able to condemn, in principle, ISIS-style slavery, beheading, lashing, amputation and other medieval practices forever (all of which are in the Quran). This is a struggle within Islam. Reformers either win, and get religion-neutral politics, or lose, and get ISIL-style theocracy. Help us, defend us, donate, or spread the word. But don't just stand by and watch. We cannot do this alone.

Maajid Nawaz, Facebook, 17.09.2014

When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You're only telling the world you fear what he might say.

From Game of Thrones

I prefer religious collaboration, discovering common ground, and so forth, rather than outward competition. I think, essentially, that the real rival to each of us is not each other any longer, but is the spirit of nihilism, negation, global capitalism, all of that stuff. That's what we should really be debating.

Timothy Winter (a.k.a. Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad), being interviewed by Dale Tuggy about the former's chapter The Trinity is Incoherent in the 2013 collection edited by J.P. Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis, Debating Christian Theism

There is a lot of Islam in the West but very few Muslims, and there are a lot of Muslims in the East but very little Islam.

Muhammad Asad, quoted by Kristiane Backer in her book From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life

Ubi caritas et amor, ibi Deus est.

Old Catholic hymn (where charity and love are, there is God)

Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.

Mahatma Gandhi

People often ask me by what standards they should measure the knowledge and qualifications of someone from whom they should accept counsel on matters of Islamic law. While this is a complex matter, at a minimum such a person should have received at least twenty years of formal training in Islamic law, should be intimately knowledgeable of the local culture, and should have a balanced, humanistic view.

Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 108

For moderates [i.e., moderate Muslims, as opposed to puritans/extremists], this would be impossible. God is moral and ethical, in the sense that God shares with human beings an objective standard for goodness, morality, and beauty. Civilizing the earth does not mean constructing buildings or paving roads. It means striving to spread on the earth the Divine attributes such as justice, mercy, compassion, goodness, and beauty. In doing so, human beings spread Divinity itself upon the earth. [...] The more the earth is permeated with justice, mercy, compassion, and beauty, the nearer the earth is to the Divine ideal.

Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 129-130

Muslims must set an example for the rest of humanity in their diligence and persistence in seeking the perfection of Divinity. If Muslims fail in setting an example for humanity in their fidelity to justice, mercy, compassion, and beauty, then Muslims have failed God. In moderate thought, God is too great to be embodied in a code of law. The [Shari'a] law helps Muslims in the quest for Godliness, but Godliness cannot be equated to the law. The ultimate objective of the law is to achieve goodness, which includes justice, mercy, and compassion, and the technicalities of the law cannot be allowed to subvert the objectives of the law. Therefore, if the application of the law produces injustice, suffering, and misery, this means that the law is not serving its purposes. In this situation, the law is corrupting the earth instead of civilizing it. In short, if the application of the law results in injustice, suffering, or misery, then the law must be reinterpreted, suspended, or reconstructed, depending on the law in question.

Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 131 (italics in original)

I must say that in my opinion the truly sad reality is that the puritan ideology of the state will only lead to considerable bloodshed without the puritans ever finding their utopia with its just despot. As some of the classical jurists used to say, justice and despotism are two opposites, and the two will never meet without one killing the other. After much suffering, the puritans are bound to wake up and realize that while they dreamed in clouds of their utopia, on this earth they only managed to create a nightmare.

Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 199-200

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.

Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can't Buy - the moral limits of markets, page 203

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
—that is all
Ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know.

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Edith Stein, Jewish philosopher who converted to the Roman Catholic Church and became a Discalced Carmelite nun

We have seen the future, and it has failed already.

James Kalb, Against Inclusiveness, page 154

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Winston Churchill

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.

Anonymous

Based on the evidence of the past four centuries and the state of contemporary philosophy, the rational conclusion is that reason alone has failed as a means by which to discover or devise the truth about the nature of reality, morality, what human beings should care about, and how they should live. Despite high hopes for its success since the seventeenth century, modern philosophy has foundered in its central ambition. It sought universal, rationally demonstrable truth, but has produced instead an open-ended welter of preferential, ultimately arbitrary truth claims.

Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, page 379

Modern reason in its two most influential expressions is therefore a schizophrenically mixed bag: philosophy has dramatically failed, but science has spectacularly succeeded. One consequence is that the ever-expanding technological capacities afforded by scientific advances are set within an increasingly rancorous culture of moral disagreement and political contestation. If not necessarily a failure of modernity per se, this fact certainly contributes to its volatility and potential for man-made catastrophes on scales inconceivable in the preindustrial world.

Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, page 380

And perhaps some religious truth claims really are true, and maybe their rejection helps to explain both why Western history has unfolded as it has in the past half millennium and why modernity is now failing.

Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, page 383

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