“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”
Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) French writer
Book V,1314b.39
Politics
“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”
Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) French writer
Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
Source: Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), p. 83
Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist
Preface (Scribner edition, 1872) <!-- New York, Scribner p xx -->
Chips from a German Workshop (1866)
Context: He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge it for the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he trusts his own life, and the lives of those who are dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahmin, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu.
Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French novelist and philosopher
Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787)
Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics
Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 3). Yahuda Ms. 15.3, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel. 2006 Online Version at Newton Project http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00220
William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania
Letter to Peter the Great, the Czar of Russia, 2 July 1698, in Samuel McPherson Janney, The Life of William Penn (Philadelphia, 1852), p. 407
“He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands.”
Edward Everett Hale book The Man Without a Country
Epitaph of Philip Nolan in "The Man Without a Country" (1863)