#rue

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests. ↗

— George Santayana

#denies #fashioned #gods #human #image

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject. ↗

— George Santayana

#brief #could #created #fear #first

Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another. ↗

— George Saunders

#answers #bad #bet #cruel #declines

I still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that, even within that, there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, although that doesn't eradicate the reality of the suffering. It's all true at once, kind of humming and sublime. ↗

— George Saunders

#beauty #believe #capitalism #eradicate #even

My habit would have been to veer towards the dark - to prove I was something; edgy, or maybe to prove that I was cognisant of the dark side. Now, with age and confidence, I can say, yeah, that's true, but I am cognisant of the fact that people can do things well. And can be more loving than you expect. ↗

— George Saunders

#am #been #confidence #dark #dark side

I treat people who write me the way my friends and I all treat each other when we go to each other for advice, which is sometimes with supreme cruelty. ↗

— Dan Savage

#cruelty #each #friends #go #i

None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#feels #god #how #learn #love

I think that my ideas of the world are that it's random and cruel but kind of quite comical really, and therefore the humour, in a sense, springs from that. ↗

— Alexei Sayle

#humour #i #i think #ideas #kind

I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There are a lot of dead fish in the water. ↗

— John Sayles

#america #dead #defeats #feel #final

But the reporter has the responsibility to determine, number one, whether that is true, and number two, to make a judgment as to whether it's in the public interest and whether or not it should be part of the debate. ↗

— Bob Schieffer

#determine #interest #judgment #make #number