Quotes about hell
page 14

Charlotte Brontë photo

“The theatre was full — crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there; palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos — hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing — half lava, half glow.I had heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness — something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.For awhile — a long while — I thought it was only a woman, though an unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength — for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand; bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the public — a milder condiment for a people's palate — than Vashti torn by seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster — like silver: rather, be it said, like Death.”

Source: Villette (1853), Ch. XXIII: Vashi

Tad Williams photo

“Damn everyone to Hell. And damn the bloody forest. And God, too, for that matter.
He looked up fearfully from his chill handful of water, but his silent blasphemy went unpunished.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 16, “The White Arrow” (p. 238).

Markiplier photo

“…Dammit, where the hell are these guys? They're nowhere to be found.”

Markiplier (1989) American YouTuber and Internet personality

Video game commentary, Calm Time (November 23, 2013)

Thomas Carlyle photo

“There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards. p. 327.
1890s and attributed from posthumous publications

Joe Strummer photo

“You might have deemed our long gun-deck
Two hundred feet of hell.”

Henry Howard Brownell (1820–1872) American writer and historian

The River Fight (published 1864). Compare: "War is hell", attributed to William Tecumseh Sherman; "This is the soldier brave enough to tell, The glory-dazzled world that 'war is hell'", Henry van Dyke, On the St. Gaudens Statue of Sherman.

Amir Khusrow photo
Mohammad Khatami photo

“One cannot reach paradise by creating Hell for others”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

Morning Edition with Jacki Northam, National Public Radio, September 8, 2006, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5786976

Charlie Brooker photo

“If you're hell-bent on making your bank look and sound like a simpleton, a desk labelled Travel Money is still a bit too formal. Why not call it Oooh! Look at the Funny Foreign Banknotes instead? And accompany it with a doodle of a French onion-seller riding a bike, with a little black beret on his head and a baguette up his arse and a speech bubble saying, "Zut Alors! Here is where you gettez les Francs!"”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 6 November 2006, The banks are coming over all chummy. It's nauseating http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1940584,00.html
On Barclays' rebranding in an attempt to make themselves appear less stuffy
Guardian columns

Pete Yorn photo

“When you come back from your escape. Then I could follow you to hell. ~ "Committed"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“When Machiavelli came to the end of his life, he had a vision shortly before giving up the ghost. He saw a small company of poor scoundrels, all in rags, ill-favoured, famished, and, in short, in as bad plight as possible. He was told that these were the inhabitants of paradise, of whom it is written, Beati pauperes, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum.. After this, he was asked to which of the groups he would choose to belong; he answered that he would much rather be in Hell with those great geniuses, to converse with them about affairs of state, than be condemned to the company of the verminous scoundrels that he had first been shown.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

This account of Machiavelli's """"Dream"""" was not published until a century after his death, in Etienne Binet's Du salut d'Origene (1629).
There is an earlier but more oblique reference in a letter written by Giovambattista Busini in 1549: """"Upon falling ill, [Machiavelli] took his usual pills and, becoming weaker as the illness grew worse, told his famous dream to Filippo [Strozzi], Francesco del Nero, Iacopo Nardi and others, and then reluctantly died, telling jokes to the last."""".
The """"Dream"""" is commonly condensed into a more pithy form, such as """"I desire to go to hell, and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles"""".
Disputed

W.E.B. Du Bois photo

“I sing the goodly armes, and that Chieftaine
Who great Sepulchre of our Lord did free.
Much with his hande, much wrought he with his braine;
Much in that glorious conquest suffred hee:
And hell in vaine hitselfe opposde, in vaine
The mixed troopes Asian and Libick flee
To armes, for Heaven him favour'd, and he drew
To sacred ensignes his straid mates anew.”

Richard Carew (antiquary) (1555–1620) English scholar

Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Hierusalem. An Heroicall poeme written in Italian by Seig. Torquato Tasso, and translated into English by R. C. [Richard Carew] Esquire: and now the first part containing five cantos imprinted in both languages, &c. (1594), opening stanza
Compare Edward Fairfax's translation (1600): "The sacred armies, and the godly knight, / That the great sepulchre of Christ did free, / I sing;" altered by Atterbury thus: "I sing the war made in the Holy Land, / And the great Chief that Christ's great tomb did free."

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
John Waters photo

“I'd never trust anyone who hadn't spent at least one night of his youth in the local jail. The more hell you raise as a teen-ager, the sweeter your memories will be.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)

Desmond Morris photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Jeff Foxworthy photo
Ramakrishna photo

“Once someone gave me a book of the Christians. I asked him to read it to me. It talked about nothing but sin. Sin is the only thing one hears at your Brahmo Samaj too… He who says day and night, ‘I am a sinner, I am a sinner’, verily becomes a sinner… Why should one only talk about sin and hell, and such things?”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

October 27, 1882, to Keshub Chunder Sen. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Volume 1, Madras, 1985, p. 138. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters Ch.13
The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942)

Jonathan Edwards photo
Ray Comfort photo
Shah Jahan photo
Michael Moorcock photo

“Can Hell and Heaven be merely the difference between ignorance and knowledge?”

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 16 (p. 158)

Christopher Pitt photo
Roy Harper (singer) photo
Elie Wiesel photo

“The most significant feature of our histories, however, is the religious zeal felt or exhibited by the swordsmen of Islam before and after the “infidels” who resisted “were sent to hell”, the Brahmans massacred or molested or expelled, idols desecrated, temples demolished, and mosques raised in their stead. The prophet of Islam appears in a dream and bids a sultãn to start on the “holy expedition”, leaving no doubt that the “victory of religion” was assured. Amîr Khusrû was very eloquent about the transformation that was taking place. When the hordes of Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî sacked the temple of Somnath, he exulted, “The sword of Islãm purified the land as the Sun purifies the earth.” His enthusiasm broke all bounds when the same hordes swept over South India: “The tongue of the sword of the Khalifa of the time, which is the tongue of the flame of Islãm, has imparted light to the entire darkness of Hindustãn by the illumination of its guidance… and several capitals of the gods of the Hindus in which Satanism had prevailed since the time of Jinns, have been demolished. All these impurities of infidelity have been cleansed by the Sultãn’s destruction of idol-temples, beginning with his first expedition to Deogîr, so that the flames of the fight of the law illumine all these unholy countries… God be praised!” One wonders whether the poet of Islam is being honoured or slandered when he is presented in our own times as the pioneer of Secularism. Or, perhaps, Secularism in India has a meaning deeper than that we find in the dictionaries or dissertations on political science. We may not be much mistaken if, seeing its studied exercise in blackening everything Hindu and whitewashing everything Islamic, we suspect that this Secularism is nothing more than the good old doctrine of Islam in disguise.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Maddox photo

“What the hell is "partly cloudy" supposed to mean? When is it not partly cloudy? … Just tune into a weather forecast. Chances are you'll hear the phrase at least 3 or more times.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Meteorologist my ass! http://maddox.xmission.com/weather.html
The Best Page in the Universe

“All you need is a hell of an aperceptive mass, an IQ of 150, and a dollop of ESP, and you can ignore the headlines, because you anticipated them months ago.”

George Goodman (1930–2014) American author and economics commentator

Source: The Money Game (1968), Chapter 3, Can Ink Blots Tell You..., p. 40

Aleister Crowley photo

“Whoever can feel, the love I do tell,
Would take by the heel, poor sinners from hell;
As downward they're going, to bring them above;
To sing of Christ's dying, a Heaven of love.”

Dorothy Ripley (1767–1832) missionary

A Hymn From My Nativity (22 August 1819), p. 18
The Bank of Faith and Works United (1819)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Dean Acheson photo
John Steinbeck photo
David Suzuki photo

“The planet, hell! What about my nuts?”

David Suzuki (1936) Canadian popular scientist and environmental activist

Rick and David Suzuki get rescued http://web.archive.org/web/20070124035126/http://www.cbc.ca/mercerreport/backissues.php?season=4, Rick Mercer Report, Feb 20 2007, in reply to Mercer's attempt to get him to jump into a frozen lake "for the planet".

Max Heindel photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro ministers were among other Negro leaders who felt they were being pulled into something that they had not helped to organize. This is almost always a problem. Negro community unity was the first requisite if our goals were to be realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while ignoring social conditions in his own community that cause men an earthly hell. I stressed that the Negro minister had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership, and I asked how the Negro would ever gain freedom without his minister's guidance, support and inspiration. These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support, and as a result, the role of the Negro church today, by and large, is a glorious example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history, within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end of such naked brutality and violence as we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians in the catacombs has God's house, as a symbol, weathered such attack as the Negro churches.
I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window. It was symbolic of how sin and evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I can remember thinking that if men were this bestial, was it all worth it? Was there any hope? Was there any way out?… time has healed the wounds -- and buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over 3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting -- ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor's police dogs, clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn back, he whirled and shouted to his men to turn on the hoses. It was one of the most fantastic events of the Birmingham story that these Negroes, many of them on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the Negroes stood up and advanced, and Connor's men fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past to hold their prayer meeting. I saw there, I felt there, for the first time, the pride and the power of nonviolence.
Another time I will never forget was one Saturday night, late, when my brother telephoned me in Atlanta from Birmingham -- that city which some call "Bombingham" -- which I had just left. He told me that a bomb had wrecked his home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force upon the motel room in which I had been staying, had injured several people. My brother described the terror in the streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, behind his voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Tears came into my eyes that at such a tragic moment, my race still could sing its hope and faith.
Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html
1960s

D. L. Hughley photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Henry Adams photo
Greg Bear photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Colley Cibber photo

“We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman,—scorned, slighted, dismissed without a parting pang.”

Love's Last Shift, Act IV (1696). Compare: "Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd", William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697), Act III, scene viii (often paraphrased: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned").

Richard Roxburgh photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Tom Stoppard photo
Ayelet Waldman photo
James Carville photo

“What I'm suggesting is, stand for yourself, be for something and the hell with it. Because the hand-wringers and the editorialists and the sigh-and-pontificate crowd will be against you, whatever you do.”

James Carville (1944) political writer, consultant and United States Marine

March 11, 2002, interview with Joan Walsh http://dir.salon.com/people/feature/2002/03/11/carville/print.html

Robert Burton photo
Tanith Lee photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“How could I have died and gone to hell without noticing the transition?”

Vorkosigan Saga, Borders of Infinity (1989)

Sinclair Lewis photo
Hilaire Belloc photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Steve Allen photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Maddox photo

“The earth's population is about 6 billion. At 15 minutes per person, that amounts to over 171,000 years we'd have to spend just sitting around watching people be "famous.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

To hell with that."
I wonder if Jenny Jones can come up with a topic that rhymes with "canceled." http://maddox.xmission.com/jenny_canceled.html
The Best Page in the Universe

Will Eisner photo
Harry Truman photo

“Tell him to go to hell; I'm for Jimmy Byrnes.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Upon hearing that Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted him to be his vice presidential running mate (21 July 1944), as quoted in Choosing Truman : The Democratic Convention of 1944 (1994); also quoted in "Harry S. Truman : America's last great leader?" in USA Today magazine (January 1995) by the Society for the Advancement of Education http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_n2596_v123/ai_16399945

John F. Kennedy photo

“A wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Upon hearing about the construction of the Berlin Wall, as quoted in "Savage century" in "The Sunday Times (28 May 2006) http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article724547.ece
Attributed

William H. Gass photo
Stephen King photo
Hubert H. Humphrey photo

“The Senate is a place filled with goodwill and good intentions, and if the road to hell is paved with them, then it's a pretty good detour.”

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978) Vice-President of the USA under Lyndon B. Johnson

Reported in Newsweek (January 23, 1978), p. 23.

“During my nine days' stay at Dacca, I visited most of the riot-affected areas of the city and suburbs. … The news of the killing of hundreds of innocent Hindus in trains, on railway lines between Dacca and Narayanganj, and Dacca and Chittagong gave me the rudest shock. … I reached Barisal town and was astounded to know of the happenings in Barisal. In the District town, a number of Hindu houses were burnt and a large number of Hindus killed. I visited almost all riot-affected areas in the District. … At the Madhabpasha Zamindar's house, about 200 people were killed and 40 injured. A place, called Muladi, witnessed a dreadful hell. At Muladi Bandar alone, the number killed would total more than three hundred, as was reported to me by the local Muslims including some officers. I visited Muladi village also, where I found skeletons of dead bodies at some places. I found dogs and vultures eating corpses on he river-side. I got the information there that after the whole-scale killing of all adult males, all the young girls were distributed among the ringleaders of the miscreants. At a place called Kaibartakhali under P. S. Rajapur, 63 persons were killed. Hindu houses within a stone's throw distance from the said thana office were looted, burnt and inmates killed. All Hindu shops of Babuganj Bazar were looted and then burnt and a large number of Hindus were killed. From detailed information received, the conservative estimate of casualties was placed at 2,500 killed in the District of Barisal alone. Total casualties of Dacca and East Bengal riot were estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 10,000 killed. The lamentation of women and children who had lost their all including near and dear ones melted my heart. I only asked myself "What was coming to Pakistan in the name of Islam."”

Jogendra Nath Mandal (1904–1968) Pakistani politician

Excerpted from the resignation letter of J. N. Mandal, Minister for Law and Labour, Government of Pakistan, October 8, 1950. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Resignation_letter_of_Jogendra_Nath_Mandal https://biblio.wiki/wiki/Resignation_letter_of_Jogendra_Nath_Mandal

Richard Rorty photo

“If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?”

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) American philosopher

"Richard Rorty Interviewed by Gideon Lewis-Kraus." The Believer, June 2003.

“Hark you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light,
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.”

John Dowland (1563–1626) English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer

"Flow my tears", line 21, The Second Book of Songs.

“Radio From Hell (June 17, 2005)”
I'm evolving damnit!

Immortal Technique photo

“Hell is not a place you go, if you ain't a christian, it's the failure, of your life's greatest ambition.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

Leaving the Past
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

Robert E. Howard photo
Michael Moorcock photo
George William Curtis photo
Russell Brand photo
Caitlín R. Kiernan photo
Thomas Kyd photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

As quoted in "What a Real President Was Like: To Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society Meant Hope and Dignity" http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/doc/307079109.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Nov+13%2C+1988&author=Moyers%2C+Bill+D&desc=What+a+Real+President+Was+Like%3B+To+Lyndon+Johnson%2C+the+Great+Society+Meant+Hope+and+Dignity, by Bill Moyers, The Washington Post (13 November 1988).
Attributed

Donald J. Trump photo

“We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African- Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Norman G. Finkelstein photo

“That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state.”

Norman G. Finkelstein (1953) American political scientist and author

Norman Finkelstein: Israel is committing a holocaust in Gaza http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?load=detay&link=164483 - Today's Zaman
Sourced statements on the Middle East

Henry Van Dyke photo
George S. Patton photo

“I have fought with gun and cutlass
On the red and slippery deck
With all Hell aflame within me
And a rope around my neck.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Through A Glass, Darkly (1918)

Muhammad photo
Girolamo Savonarola photo

“I counsel you to return to God, to live after the manner of a good Christian, to repent the past, and recur to piety. Otherwise, I make known to you that severe chastisement awaits you, and that you shall be scourged in your substance, your flesh, and your kindred.
Likewise I announce to you that your life is near its end; that if you obey not my words, you will go to hell, and this letter will be brought up against you before the judgment-seat of God, and leave you no way of escape.”

Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) Italian Dominican friar and preacher

Io vi conforto di convertirvi a Dio, vivere come è obbligato ogni buon cristiano, dolervi del passato e ridurvi alla pietà. Altrimenti, io vi annunzio che è sopra di voi imminente un gran flagello, e sarete flagellato nella roba, nella persona e nella casa vostra.
Vi annunzio ancora, che della vostra vita ce n' è per poco; che, se non farete quel che vi dico, anderete nell'inferno; e questa lettera vi sarà presentata innanzi al tribunale di Dio, nè vi potrete scusare.
To the prince of Mirandola, Count Galeotto Pico, brother of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (26 March 1496), as quoted in Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola (1888) http://books.google.com/books?id=7qgTAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA442&dq=%22if+you+obey+not+my+words+you+will+go+to+hell%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rlP2TvvdIoeC2wW1mcWtAg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22if%20you%20obey%20not%20my%20words%20you%20will%20go%20to%20hell%22&f=false by Pasquale Villari, translated by Linda Villari, p. 442; also in Le lettere di Girolamo Savonarola (The letters of Jerome Savonarola), 1933, Roberto Ridolfi, L. S. Olschki, p. 107. http://books.google.com/books?ei=1dclT43LF5GnsALZybGMAg&id=NCs8AAAAMAAJ&dq=%22potrete+scusare%22+savonarola+1496&q=%22potrete+scusare%22+#search_anchor

“John: [S]piritually, you're as dead as a doorknob and heading straight for hell!.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " The Walking Dead? http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1076/1076_01.asp" (2011)

Gene Kelly photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
David Boaz photo
T.I. photo

“God will take you through hell, just to get you to heaven.”

T.I. (1980) American rapper, record producer, actor, and businessman from Georgia

"No Matter What".
2000s, Paper Trail

Asger Jorn photo

“GO TO HELL BASTARD STOP. REFUSE PRIZE STOP. NEVER ASKED FOR IT STOP. AGAINST ALL DECENCY MIX ARTIST AGAINST HIS WILL IN YOUR PUBLICITY STOP. I WANT PUBLIC CONFIRMATION NOT TO HAVE PARTICIPATED IN YOUR RIDICULOUS GAME.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Quote from Wikipedia: the text of Asger Jorn's telegram in 1964, to the president of the Guggenheim Museum, Harry F. Guggenheim
Jorn was awarded a Guggenheim Award including a generous cash prize, by an international jury assembled by Lawrence Alloway; he rejected!
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Winston S. Churchill photo
Mike Oldfield photo

“Saved by a bell
Suffer in hell
But you were too blind to tell!
Saved by a bell
Suffer in hell
And you made it through so well!”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Discovery (1984)

Richard Dawkins photo

“Imagine you are God. You’re all-powerful, nothing is beyond you. You’re all-loving. So it is really, really important to you that humans are left in no doubt about your existence and your loving nature, and exactly what they need to do in order to get to heaven and avoid eternity in the fires of hell. It’s really important to you to get that across. So what do you do? Well, if you’re Jehovah, apparently this is what you do. You talk in riddles. You tell stories which on the surface have a different message from the one you apparently want us to understand. You expect us to hear X, and instinctively understand that it needs to be interpreted in the light of Y, which you happen to have said in the course of a completely different story 500-1,000 years earlier. Instead of speaking directly into our heads - which God has presumed the capability of doing so - simply, clearly and straightforwardly in terms which the particular individual being addressed will immediately understand and respond to positively - you steep your messages in symbols, in metaphors. In fact, you choose to convey the most important message in the history of creation in code, as if you aspired to be Umberto Eco or Dan Brown. Anyone would think your top priority was to keep generation after generation after generation of theologians in meaningless employment, rather than communicate an urgent life-or-death message to the creatures you love more than any other.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

FFRF 2012 National Convention, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJTQiChzTNI?t=43m19s