#wish

If I told you to wish for good health, you would think I'm ridiculous; but when I exchange the word "wish" for the word "pray", you believe it can work. That is the disempowering delusion religions have brought us. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#delusion #health #pray #religion #wish

One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses—'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing'—along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox commentaries would be read. In this way, rather as when Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' Jewishness contrives irony at its own expense. If there is one characteristic of Jews that I admire, it is that irony is seldom if ever wasted on them. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #curses #heretics #hiwi-al-balkhi #irony

Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses." Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously. ↗

— Carrie Fisher

#addiction #alcoholism #celebrities #dysfunctional-families #fiction

Every day you have the freedom to pursue what you wish to become. ↗

— Steven Redhead

#pursue #wish-become #freedom

Brave and loyal followers! Long ago we resolved to serve neither the Romans nor anyone other than God Himself, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind. The time has now come that bids us prove our determination by our deeds we have never submitted to slavery, even when it brought no danger with it. We must not choose slavery now, and with it penalties that will mean the end of everything if we fall alive into the hands of the Romans God has given us this privilege, that we can die nobly and as free men and leave this world as free men in company with our wives and children. (Elazar Ben Yair) ↗

— Flavius Josephus

#freedom #jewish-wars #masada #romans #freedom

No one with a body full of aliments can have a luminous soul and other intellectual faculties. It is necessary to care for the body if we wish the spirit to function normally. ↗

— Michael Servetus

#care #faculties #full #function #intellectual

The children were overwhelmingly morbid. Not a single adult asked me where butterflies go when they die, but this question was more popular than pixie sticks with the under-four-foot set. I cursed parents for not preparing their children. When I was five, my mother and sister sat me up on the kitchen counter and explained the facts of life: the Easter Bunny didn't exist, Elijah was God's invisible friend, with any luck Nana would die soon, and if I ever saw a unicorn, I should kill it or catch it for cash. I turned out okay. ↗

— Sloane Crosley

#jewish #kids #life-lessons #humor

I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent. ↗

— Edith Sitwell

#i #i wish #incompetent #pianos #put

He imagined them sitting somewhere, just enjoying each other's company, her head on his chest, his arm around her. And he realized how desperately lonely he had become. ↗

— Tim LaHaye

#lonley #love #wish #imagination

I like Dancing of Indian girls more than my parents’ prayers . Because they dance with love and passion . But my parents just say their prayers because they got used to it . ↗

— Ali Shariati

#death #frienship #girls #god #hope