#politic

We dispute the arbitrary distribution of power and wealth, which is claimed as the natural order, but which is in fact not natural at all but rather artificially created and sustained by ancient privileges. ↗

— Kate Elliott

#politics #nature

...an animal, at the end of a few months, is what it will be all its life; and its species, at the end of a thousand years, is what it was in the first of those thousand years. Why is man alone subject to becoming an imbecile? ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#nature #philosophy #political-science #political-theory #nature

We can act to deal with the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, but the disaster was only faintly political in the economics and indifference...the relief will be very political, in who gives how much (Bush offering 15 million, then 35 million under pressure, the cost of his inauguration and then 350 million under strong international pressure)...but the event itself transcends politics, the realm of things we cause and can work to prevent. We cannot wish that human beings were not subject to the forces of nature, including the mortality... we cannot wish for the seas to dry up, that the waves grow still, that the tectonic plates ceast to exist, that nature ceases to be beyond our abilities to predict and control... But the terms of that nature include such catastrophe and suffering, which leaves us with sorrow as not a problem to be solved but a fact. And it leaves us with compassion as the work we will never finish ↗

— Rebecca Solnit

#disaster #politics #nature

Man is Nature's most wonderful creature. Torturing him, crushing him, murdering him for his beliefs and ideas is more than a violation of human rights-it is a crime against all humanity. ↗

— Armando Valladares

#political #nature

A cult is a religion with no political power. ↗

— Tom Wolfe

#political #political power #power #religion

I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. ... These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. ↗

— George Carlin

#politics #religion #religion

I have learned that one should say "Peace!" to those who shout their hatred for one's being and presence or at one's passage. ↗

— Tariq Ramadan

#politics #islam

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries. ↗

— James Madison

#organized-religion #politics #religion #separation-of-church-and-state #religion

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#organized-religion #philosophy #politics #religion #religion

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. ↗

— Mark Twain

#politics #religion #religion