#up

You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#controlled #declared #end #enter #even

I was brought up in industrial south Lancashire, down the cobbled road from where LS Lowry (1887-1976) lived and painted. ↗

— Ian Mckellen

#cobbled #down #i #industrial #lived

It's only fair that stable gay relationships of long standing should have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples. I know the image of gay marriage is to some people horrific and ludicrous. ↗

— Ian Mckellen

#fair #gay #gay marriage #horrific #i

Stealing things is a glorious occupations, particularly in the art world. ↗

— Malcolm Mclaren

#art world #glorious #occupations #particularly #stealing

I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns. I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#around #barrel #father #gave #grew

An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#certitude #entail #evidence #faith #free

The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths - of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#better #christianity #faiths #fight #fundamentalism

The problem for those who assert biblical authority in support of traditional definitions of marriage is that one could, with equal validity, assert that the lending of money or certain kinds of haircuts are forbidden by God, or that slavery and the subjugation of women are authorized by the Lord. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#authority #authorized #certain #certain kinds #could

I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously, and I would, I think, be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity, if by critic one means an observer who brings historical and literary judgment to bear on the texts and traditions of the church. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#am #away #bear #brings #children

I believe that my children, who are young, will look back on the early years of the 21st century in rather the same way I look back on the middle of the 20th: as a time when seemingly respectable people supported discrimination against Americans simply because those Americans were different from themselves. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#against #back #because #believe #century