#marty

They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#satyagraha #torture

It is not the punishment but the cause that makes the martyr. ↗

— Saint Augustine

#makes #martyr #punishment

They say martyrdom is the highest rank a believer can achieve! Do not believe in this! The highest rank is the life itself, it is the existence itself! There is no rank in death, but only nothingness! Rank exists only in life! Stick to the life, stay away from death! Neither kill nor die! ↗

— Mehmet Murat ildan

#death

As Luxenberg's work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next. ↗

— Ibn Warraq

#criticism-of-the-koran #death #destructive-cult #houris #islam

But its exclusive character and irreconcileable hostility to the religious cults and ceremonies with which the whole social life of the city-state and the empire were inseparably connected at every turn, brought the Christians into inevitable conflict with the government and with public opinion. To the man in the street, the Christian was an anti-social atheist who would take no part in the public feasts and the games, which played such a large part in city life. To the authorities he was a passive rebel, who would neither take his share of municipal offices nor pay loyal homage to the Emperor. Hence the rise of persecution, and the driving of the Christians into an underground existence, as a proscribed sect. The Church grew under the shadow of the executioner's rods and axes, and every Christian lived in the peril of physical torture and death. The thought of martyrdom coloured the whole outlook of early Christianity. But it was not only a fear, it was also an ideal and a hope. For the martyr was the complete Christian, he was the champion and hero of the new society and its conflict with the old, and even the Christians who failed in the moment of the trial - the lapsi - looked on the martyrs as their saviours and protectors ↗

— Christopher Henry Dawson

#martyrdom #roman-empire #death

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain. The Brothers Karamazov Book VI - The Russian Monk, Chapter 3 - Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zosima. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#martyrs #prophets #religion #religious-institutions #the-brothers-karamazov

I'm fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God. Our fight now is against the Americans. ↗

— Osama bin Laden

#die #fight #fighting #go #god

I tell you, to be honest, every single one of us, without any exaggeration, every single one of us was 100 percent sure that we would all be... all be martyred, but you know, Allah chooses to take a person's life when he chooses. And we have no control over. ↗

— John Walker Lindh

#any #chooses #control #every #exaggeration

I was raised with 'Laurel and Hardy' and 'I Love Lucy' and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it's the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you're performing in your bedroom for yourself. ↗

— Steve Martin

#andy #bedroom #day #friend #had

One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted. ↗

— Thomas Reed

#been #being #burned #counted #god