
§ 7
1780s, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785)
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870), Note I : Hâjî Abdû, The Man
Context: Christianity and Islamism have been on their trial for the last eighteen and twelve centuries. They have been ardent in proselytizing, yet they embrace only one-tenth and one-twentieth of the human race. Hâjî Abdû would account for the tardy and unsatisfactory progress of what their votaries call "pure truths," by the innate imperfections of the same. Both propose a reward for mere belief, and a penalty for simple unbelief; rewards and punishments being, by the way, very disproportionate. Thus they reduce everything to the scale of a somewhat unrefined egotism; and their demoralizing effects become clearer to every progressive age.
§ 7
1780s, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785)
Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 16 (p. 124)
The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)
13 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)
“Fascism lasted twelve years in Germany. Stalinism lasted twice as long in the Soviet Union.”
Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships
Context: Fascism lasted twelve years in Germany. Stalinism lasted twice as long in the Soviet Union. There are many common features but also certain differences. Stalinism exhibited a much more subtle kind of hypocrisy and demagogy, with reliance not on an openly cannibalistic program like Hitler's but on a progressive, scientific, and popular socialist ideology.
This served as a convenient screen for deceiving the working class, for weakening the vigilance of the intellectuals and other rivals in the struggle for power, with the treacherous and sudden use of the machinery of torture, execution, and informants, intimidating and making fools of millions of people, the majority of whom were neither cowards nor fools. As a consequence of this "specific feature" of Stalinism, it was the Soviet people, its most active, talented, and honest representatives, who suffered the most terrible blow.
Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VII The End of the World
Epilogue, p. 241
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)
Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 51