“The Bible is the most thought-suggesting book in the world.
No other deals with such grand themes.”
Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 31.
Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 20, “Intellectuals” (p. 86)
“The Bible is the most thought-suggesting book in the world.
No other deals with such grand themes.”
Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 31.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Some Mistakes of Moses (1879) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38802/38802-h/38802-h.htm Preface <br class="br">Context: Too great praise challenges attention, and often brings to light a thousand faults that otherwise the general eye would never see. Were we allowed to read the Bible as we do all other books, we would admire its beauties, treasure its worthy thoughts, and account for all its absurd, grotesque and cruel things, by saying that its authors lived in rude, barbaric times. But we are told that it was written by inspired men; that it contains the will of God; that it is perfect, pure, and true in all its parts; the source and standard of all moral and religious truth; that it is the star and anchor of all human hope; the only guide for man, the only torch in Nature's night. These claims are so at variance with every known recorded fact, so palpably absurd, that every free unbiased soul is forced to raise the standard of revolt.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic
Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)
Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president
Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)
Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books
Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)
Context: Fascism is a complete abdication of personal responsibility. You are surrendering all responsibility for your own actions to the state on the belief that in unity there is strength, which was the definition of fascism represented by the original roman symbol of the bundle of bound twigs. Yes, it is a very persuasive argument: “In unity there is strength.” But inevitably people tend to come to a conclusion that the bundle of bound twigs will be much stronger if all the twigs are of a uniform size and shape, that there aren’t any oddly shaped or bent twigs that are disturbing the bundle. So it goes from “in unity there is strength” to “in uniformity there is strength” and from there it proceeds to the excesses of fascism as we’ve seen them exercised throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.
Now anarchy, on the other hand, is almost starting from the principle that “in diversity, there is strength,” which makes much more sense from the point of view of looking at the natural world. Nature, and the forces of evolution — if you happen to be living in a country where they still believe in the forces of evolution, of course — did not really see fit to follow that “in unity and in uniformity there is strength” idea. If you want to talk about successful species, then you’re talking about bats and beetles; there are thousands of different varieties of different bat and beetle.
Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project
1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)
Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist
"All Questions Answered" by Donald Knuth, GoogleTechTalks, YouTube, May 29, 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLBvCB2kr4Q,