#alot

Once, when a religionist denounced me in unmeasured terms, I sent him a card saying, "I am sure you believe that I will go to hell when I die, and that once there I will suffer all the pains and tortures the sadistic ingenuity of your deity can devise and that this torture will continue forever. Isn't that enough for you? Do you have to call me bad names in addition? ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#humor #rebuttal #religion #zealots #humor

Give a man with a death wish a bottle of whisky and a loaded gun, you get a dead body. Give a martyr a quote from scripture and a pocket full of prayers and you get a room full of corpses. ↗

— Kevis Hendrickson

#rogue-hunter-saga #zealotry #zyra-zanr #death

He felt that he had always been there, among the apple trees, watching for the woman in the tower to come to her window. Seasons may have passed, years may have grown green on the bough, then withered and fallen, but he would stand there and wait for a chance to keep a promise he had made. ↗

— Ava Zavora

#lady-of-shalott #love

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage... As chairman emeritus of the extreme right-wing National Organization for Marriage ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#anti-glbt #bigotry #zealotry #change

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel. ↗

— Anatole France

#truth #zealotry #men

Then faith's paradox is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual determines his relation to the universal through his relation to God, not his relation to God through his relation through the universal... Unless this is how it is, faith has no place in existence; and faith is then a temptation. ↗

— Søren Kierkegaard

#temptation #zealotry #faith

Moderation is a wiser policy than zealotry ↗

— Christopher Paolini

#moderation #way-of-life #zealotry #life

But, I believe," I continue, "I know what true love is - or what it should be." "What should it be?" Tristan asks, his voice soft now. "It should be a friendship and truly knowing who a person is, knowing his flaws and hopes and strengths and fears, knowing all of it. And admiring and caring for - loving the person because of those things. ↗

— Lisa Ann Sandell

#elaine-of-ascalot #friendship #gradual-love #lady-of-shallot #over-the-years

That's what you get,' he said, nodding towards a group of the men engaged in some close-order military drill, 'when you give people Bibles and guns. You should give 'em either one or the other, but not both. It just messes up their brains. ↗

— K.W. Jeter

#war #warfare #zealotry #men

We humans are naturally disposed to worship gods and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas. I would rather see that impulse directed into the adoration of daft singers, thicko footballers and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#religious-extremism #zealotry #nature