All Quotes By Tag: Secularism

“Religions served a purpose in establishing social order during the human evolving experience, but in today’s secular connected world, religions had become a liability for further progress….”

“In most of the world, people don’t dichotomize the sacred and the secular as we commonly do in the West, so elsewhere religious considerations are much more at the forefront of people’s minds in assessing political issues.”

“Love is holiness.”

“Être humain, c’est la bonne religion.”

“There was a pond right next to the house I grew up in. One afternoon while playing by the pond, I accidentally fell in it. There was nobody around at that time as it was afternoon and everybody was sleeping, and I was yet to learn swimming. So, I prayed to all the gods and goddesses like all the adult kids did in that culture. But no god or deity came to my rescue. So, I struggled under the murky water and finally managed to survive by pulling myself to the bank. Perhaps that was the first sign I received from Nature about the true helplessness of life. While you are drowning, no god is going to come to your rescue, so learn to swim my friend, because it is only you, the living god on earth, who can save yourself and nobody else. The only god there is, is your will to live – so, be aware of that Himalayan will and make it as conscientious as possible, for then only, can your godliness have any impact upon your life as well as the lives of others.”

“Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein’s injunction to ‘remember your humanity and forget the rest.’ It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are ‘fashionable,’ it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation.”

“Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, about the most important things in the world, and you might as well, if you were going to fight it, be called “Rushdie,” and stand where your father had placed you, in the tradition of the grand Aristotelian, Averroës, Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd.”

“One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the goyim were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it’s one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After the Shoah or Endlösung or Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for ‘exile,’ or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the ‘proof,’ so for a time the professional interpreters of god’s will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate.I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein’s ‘offer’ of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.”

“In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.”

“Love gives life, so should faith.”

“Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight.”

“The process of secularisation arises not from the loss of faith but from the loss of social interest in the world of faith. It begins the moment men feel that religion is irrelevant to the common way of life and that society as such has nothing to do with the truths of faith.”

“Some people believe the alternative to bad religion is secularism, but that’s wrong . . . . The answer to bad religion is better religion–prophetic rather than partisan, broad and deep instead of narrow, and based on values as opposed to ideology.”

“If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody’s personal concern!”

“Misstraue jedem Politiker, jedem Regierungs- oder Staatschef, der seine Religion zum Instrument macht. Halte Abstand von solchen Politikern, die ihre auf das Jenseits orientierte Religion und ihre diesseitige Politik miteinander vermischen.”