“Perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.”
Radio Message of His Holiness Pius XII to Participants in the National Catechetical Congress of the United States in Boston https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/speeches/1946/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19461026_congresso-catechistico-naz.html, from Castel Gandolfo on Saturday, 26 October 1946
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Pope Pius XII7
260th Pope of the Catholic Church 1876–1958Related quotes
“If pride is a sin… moral pride is the greatest sin.”
John Irving book The Cider House Rules
Source: The Cider House Rules
Mohammad Mosaddegh (1882–1967) Prime Minister of Iran
Defending himself against a treason charge, on 19 December, 1953
“The greatest sin, after the initial sin, is its publication.”
Machado de Assis book Quincas Borba
O maior pecado, depois do pecado, é a publicação do pecado.
Quincas Borba (1891) ch. 32; Clotilde Wilson (trans.) Philosopher or Dog? (New York: Noonday Press, 1954) p. 41.
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism
Context: The real sin — perhaps it is a sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no remission — is the sin of heresy, the sin of thinking for oneself. The saying has been heard before now, here in Spain, that to be a liberal — that is, a heretic — is worse than being an assassin, a thief, or an adulterer. The gravest sin is not to obey the Church, whose infallibility protects us from reason.
Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse
The Mike Wallace Interview (ABC) http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/sanger_margaret_t.html, <br class="br">Posed question: "Do you believe in sin — When I say "believe" I don't mean believe in committing sin, do you believe there is such a thing as a sin
“Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth living.”
Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori
et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
VIII, line 83.
Satires, Satire VIII
Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
Source: The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics
Physics in the Contemporary World, Arthur D. Little Memorial Lecture at M.I.T. (25 November 1947)
Context: Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons, as they were in fact used, dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
