#martyrs

I am telling you before anything, that the blood of the martyrs and the injured will not go in vain. And I would like to affirm, I will not hesitate to punish those who are responsible fiercely. I will hold those in charge who have violated the rights of our youth with the harshest punishment stipulated in the law. ↗

— Hosni Mubarak

#am #anything #before #blood #charge

I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike. ↗

— Mary Harris Jones

#children #clothes #dead #despair #desperate

They're not put on earth to be martyrs; they have to want to come out. It depends on your culture, where you work, where you live. Each person's circumstances are unique. ↗

— Billie Jean King

#come #culture #depends #each #earth

It's an insidious idea, this notion that there is life after death. The promise of a reward in the afterlife has been used as an excuse to deny help to the poor, helpless and oppressed; to explain away human misery rather than deal with it. It is an idea that is used to encourage young men and women to kill themselves, and others, so that they can become martyrs. It allows victims of injustice to be told not to worry because justice will be done in the afterlife. It depresses me to think that so many people on the planet live their lives with this notion. Can we truly fulfill our potential as a species as long as we hold on to, and encourage, the perpetuation of the lie of life after death? ↗

— Alom Shaha

#atheism #injustice #justice #life-after-death #martyrs

In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs. ↗

— Alexandre Dumas

#martyrs #religion #faith

The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph's legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain. ↗

— David Ebershoff

#religion #men

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

We don’t know why God chose to deliver Peter from death and James through death. The text doesn’t say. ↗

— K. Howard Joslin

#deliverance #endurance #faith #martyrs #death

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced. ↗

— John B. S. Haldane

#avoid #belief #cannot #dispense #ever

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off. ↗

— Emile M. Cioran

#been #cut #great #haven #heads