Quotes for forgiveness
page 8

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness.”

The Idiot (1868–9)

Emily Brontë photo
E.M. Forster photo

“Please forgive my accuser…and, actually, thank God for him. I am trusting that his action will make me, my wife and family, and ultimately all of you, stronger. He didn't violate you; I did.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

In a letter to New Life Church; published in Colorado Springs Gazette, November 5, 2006.

Edgar Degas photo

“Women can never forgive me; they hate me, they feel I am disarming them. I show them without their coquetry.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quoted by Julian Barnes, 'The Artist As Voyeur' (1996), from The Grove Book of Art Writing, ed. Martin Gayford and Karen Wright (Grove Press, 2000)
quotes, undated

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Muhammad photo

“Everything in existence prays for the forgiveness of the person who teaches the Qur’an - even the fish in the sea.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Usulul Kafi, Volume 3, Page 301
Shi'ite Hadith

Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Jerry Springer photo

“Okay bear with me this'll be a little tough. You should know this isn't the first time I thought about leaving. I thought about it some twenty years ago when a check that would soon become a part of Cincinnati folklore, made me see life from the bottom. To be honest, a thought about ending it all crossed my mind, but a more reasonable alternative seemed to be 'hey how about just leaving town? Running away? Starting life over, some place else?' You see, in political terms as well as human, here in Cincinnati, I was dead. But then in the, probably, the luckiest decision I ever made, I decided 'No! I'm staying put!' I would withstand all the jokes, all the ridicule. I'd pretend it didn't hurt, and I would give every ounce of my being to Cincinnati. 'Why in time,' I was thinking, 'you'd have to like me. Or if not like me, at least respect me.' And I'd run for council even unendorsed. And I'd prove to you I could be the best public servant you ever had, or I'd die trying. Be it as a mayor, an anchor, or a commentator, whatever it took, I was determined to have you know that I was more than a check and a hooker on a one night stand. But something happened along the way. Maybe it's God's way of teaching us. I don't know, but you see? In trying to prove something to you, I learned something about me. I learned that I had fallen in love with you. With Cincinnati. With you who taught me more about life, and caring, and forgiving, and also most importantly, giving. Giving something back. Which is part of the reason… I have been… Excuse me. So sad this week. why… Why it's so hard to say goodbye. God bless you, and goodbye.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

his final commentary at NBC's WLWT in Ohio, January 1993
This American Life http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/04/258.html, Ep. 258, 01/30/04, Leaving the Fold; Act One.

Kage Baker photo
Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo

“Our Christian God, the merciful, forgiving God, the personification of eternal love, our father, as Christ has taught us, had absolutely not the slightest thing in common with the vengeful bloodthirsty, angry old Jaweh of the Jews…the old Jew-God Jaweh is…identical with Satan!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Letter to Eva Chamberlain-Wagner (14 April 1927), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1236
1920s

Georges Bernanos photo

“There's no hatred that can ever be satisfied either in this world or the next, and the hatred that one has for oneself is probably the one for which there is no forgiveness.”

Aucune haine ne saurait s’assouvir en ce monde ni dans l’autre, et la haine qu’on se porte à soi-même est probablement celle entre toutes pour laquelle il n’est pas de pardon!
The curé of Fenouille to the mayor, p. 208
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

Robert Erskine Childers photo

“I want you to shake the hands of every Minister in the Provisional Government ( Irish Free State )who's responsible for my death. I forgive them and so must you, Erskine. The second will apply if ever you go into Irish politics. You must not speak of my execution in public.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Robert Erskine's last jail cell words to his son, also named Erskine, in November 1922. His son would become President of Ireland 52 years later. Cited in " The Riddle of Erskine Childers " By Andrew Boyle, Hutchinson, London (1977), pg. 320.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

Saki photo
Tenzin Gyatso photo

“All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness … the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

As quoted in Especially for Christians: Powerful Thought-provoking Words from the Past (2005) by Mark Alton Rose, p. 19

Simone Weil photo

“I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Void and Compensation (1947), p. 200

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Jeff VanderMeer photo
Martin Farquhar Tupper photo
Meher Baba photo
Pete Yorn photo

“Something won’t forgive it all ~ "Sense"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Frederick II of Prussia photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Galway Kinnell photo
Miss Shangay Lily photo
Benedict Arnold photo

“Let me die in this old uniform in which I fought my battles. May God forgive me for ever having put on another.”

Benedict Arnold (1741–1801) Continental and later British Army general during the American Revolutionary War

Unverified, but reportedly said by Arnold on his deathbed in 1801, requesting to wear the uniform of the Colonial Army from before his defection to the British, as quoted in The Picturesque Hudson http://www.kellscraft.com/PicturesqueHudson/PicturesqueHudson08.html (1915) by Clifton Johnson

Max Scheler photo

“Yet all this is not ressentiment. These are only stages in the development of its sources. Revenge, envy, the impulse to detract, spite, *Schadenfreude*, and malice lead to ressentiment only if there occurs neither a moral self-conquest (such as genuine forgiveness in the case of revenge) nor an act or some other adequate expression of emotion (such as verbal abuse or shaking one's fist), and if this restraint is caused by a pronounced awareness of impotence. There will be no ressentiment if he who thirsts for revenge really acts and avenges himself, if he who is consumed by hatred harms his enemy, gives him “a piece of his mind,” or even merely vents his spleen in the presence of others. Nor will the envious fall under the dominion of ressentiment if he seeks to acquire the envied possession by means of work, barter, crime, or violence. Ressentiment can only arise if these emotions are particularly powerful and yet must be suppressed because they are coupled with the feeling that one is unable to act them out—either because of weakness, physical or mental, or because of fear. Through its very origin, ressentiment is therefore chiefly confined to those who serve and are dominated at the moment, who fruitlessly resent the sting of authority. When it occurs elsewhere, it is either due to psychological contagion—and the spiritual venom of ressentiment is extremely contagious—or to the violent suppression of an impulse which subsequently revolts by “embittering” and “poisoning” the personality. If an ill-treated servant can vent his spleen in the antechamber, he will remain free from the inner venom of ressentiment, but it will engulf him if he must hide his feelings and keep his negative and hostile emotions to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

William Ernest Henley photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission.”

This seems to be derived from a statement attributed to Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, and which she regularly used in her public addresses: "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)

Nathan Deal photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Newton Lee photo

“Forgiveness, not vengeance, yields peace and security.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo

“Disagreements don't cause disunity, a lack of forgiveness does.”

Loren Cunningham (1935) American missionary

Cited in: George Otis Jr, The God They Never Knew, 1978, p. 7-8.
retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20011115090120/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1082/geotisjr.htm on 19:19, 2 May 2007, (UTC)

Frances Kellor photo
Laisenia Qarase photo
Ron Paul photo
Gordon B. Hinckley photo
Taylor Swift photo
Totaram Sanadhya photo
William Blake photo

“Forgiveness of enemies can only come upon their repentance.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

1780s, Annotations to Lavater (1788)

Dayanand Saraswati photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
James Morrison photo

“Oh it tears me up
I try to hold on but it hurts too much
I try to forgive, but it's not enough to make it all okay.”

James Morrison (1984) English singer-songwriter and guitarist

Broken Strings
Song lyrics, Undiscovered (James Morrison album) (2006)

Sri Aurobindo photo

“Forgiveness is praised by the Christian and the Vaishnava, but for me, I ask, "What have I to forgive and whom?"”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

Khalil Gibran photo
Steve Smith (cricketer) photo

“I know I will regret this for the rest of my life. I'm absolutely gutted. I hope in time I can earn back respect and forgiveness.”

Steve Smith (cricketer) (1989) Australian international cricketer

Steve Smith after ball-tampering incident in March 2018. https://www.cricket.com.au/news/steve-smith-press-conference-ball-tampering-scandal-speaks-regret-bancroft-warner/2018-03-29

Henrik Ibsen photo
Jimmy Carter photo

“I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Interview in Playboy magazine (1976), while a candidate for President.
Pre-Presidency

Catherine the Great photo

“The more a man knows, the more he forgives.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Widely attributed to Catherine II online, this has been attributed to Confucius in published books, but no print sources attribute this to Catherine.
Misattributed

Octavia E. Butler photo
Alexander Maclaren photo
George Henry Thomas photo
David Vitter photo

“O forgive! Thy sons live from Thee reft;
Praised for grace, Turn thy face to those left,
"Forgiven!"”

Yom Tov of Joigny English rabbi

Omnam Kayn, trans. from the Hebrew by Israel Zangwill

Dag Hammarskjöld photo
Muhammad photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.”

Zvi Rex (1909)

The quote is associated with Theodor Adorno's analysis of a "secondary antisemitism", often explained as an antisemitism not despite of but because of Auschwitz. In Der ewige Antisemit (The Eternal Antisemite) Broder wrote in chapter 5, titled The offender as probation officer, or The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz: And for Auschwitz, a sagacious Israeli once said, for Auschwitz the Germans will never forgive us. In 1988, Gunnar Heinsohn identified Broder's sagacious Israeli as Zvi Rix, a friend of his (Heinsohn's), born in Vienna in 1909 and died in Rechovot/Israel in 1981, who had used to concentrate the drive of antizionism in the sentence: »For Auschwitz the Germans will never forgive us!« In 2005, Heinsohn in his book Söhne und Weltmacht (Sons and World-Power) suggested, that Rix had read his Hobbes, and quoted from Leviathan: "To have done more hurt to a man than he can [...] expiate inclineth the doer to hate the sufferer."
But Rix may as well have read the book Post Mortem. The Jews in Germany--now (1968) by Leo Katcher, where the German Jewish journalist Hilde Walter is quoted as follows: "It seems the Germans will never forgive us Auschwitz. That is their sickness and they desperately want a cure. But they want it to be easy, painless. They refuse to go under the knife by facing up to the past and their part in it."
The script for Axel Corti's film Where To and Back Part 2: Santa Fe (winner of a Nymphe d'Or award at the Monte Carlo Festival in February 1986) has the Austrian Jew Treumann who has found refuge in New York during World War II say about his former countrymen: "They'll never forgive us for what they did to us." This caused protests from writers Hans Sahl as well as Stefan Heym, who claimed certain rights to variants of this line, screenwriter Georg Stefan Troller revealed in 2013. But when Troller met with Heym the next time in Paris, Heym generously waived any objections: Jewish jokes are wanderers like the famous punchlines of the comedians. The original author cannot be ascertained any more.
In 1982 a line, which Walter Mehring had sent his fellow refugee from Nazi Germany Hans Sahl in 1948, had been published in Germany:
Source: „Und Auschwitz, sagte mal ein kluger Israeli, 'Auschwitz werden uns die Deutschen nie verzeihen'". Henryk M. Broder: Der ewige Antisemit. Kapitel 5: Der Täter als Bewährungshelfer oder Die Deutschen werden den Juden Auschwitz nie verzeihen. 1st edition Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag Frankfurt/Main 1986, p. 130; edition btb Berlin 2005, p. 158 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=VQ4_AQAAIAAJ&q=israeli
Source: Ein 1909 in Wien geborener und 1981 in Rechovot/Israel gestorbener Freund, Zvi Rix, pflegte den Grund des Antizionismus in der Sentenz zu verdichten: »Auschwitz werden uns die Deutschen niemals verzeihen!«. Gunnar Heinsohn: Was ist Antisemitismus? Eichborn, Frankfurt/Main 1988, p. 115.
Source: Gunnar Heinsohn: Söhne und Weltmacht. Orell-Füssli 2005. V. Youth bulges im transnationalen Terror. p. 139
Source: Thomas Hobbes: Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan. Chapter XI: Of the Difference of Manners. bartleby.com http://www.bartleby.com/34/5/11.html
Source: Leo Katcher: Post Mortem. The Jews in Germany--now. Hamish Hamilton London 1968, p. 87-8 https://books.google.de/books?id=Qc27AAAAIAAJ&q=%22their+sickness%22, Delacorte Press 1968, p. 89 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=z9JtAAAAMAAJ&q=%22It+seems+the+Germans%22 .
Atina Grossmann: Trauma, Memory and Motherhood, in Archiv für Sozialgeschichte vol. 38 (1998), p. 234 https://books.google.de/books?id=2LfZAAAAMAAJ&q=dps https://books.google.de/books?id=2LfZAAAAMAAJ&q=154+f. (also in Richard Bessel, Dirk Schumann: Life after Death 2003, p. 120 http://librarun.org/book/53490/134) with reference to Norbert Mühlen: The Return of Germany. A Tale of Two Countries https://books.google.de/books?id=QeM9AAAAIAAJ, Chicago 1953, p. 154-5, quotes, Jewish DPs in Germany after the war had joked among themselves: "The Germans will never forgive us for what they did to us." This however can not be found in Mühlen op.cit.
Source: Alex Corti's Films Explore World War II's Impact http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/24/movies/alex-corti-s-films-explore-world-war-ii-s-impact.html by Annette Insdorf. The New York Times July 24, 1988
Source: „Judenwitze sind wie die berühmten Wanderpointen der Humoristen. Der eigentliche Urheber ist nicht mehr auszumachen. [...].“ Excerpt http://www.verlagberlinbrandenburg.de/upload/PDF/978-3-942476-56-0/F.F.dabei_Nr._16_2013_27.07.-09.08.2013.pdf from Therese Hörnigk (ed.): Ich habe mich immer eingemischt. Erinnerungen an Stefan Heym. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg 2013, p. 156

Geert Wilders photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Fiona Apple photo
Luis de Góngora photo

“The hours will hardly forgive you, those hours that are wearing away the days, those days that are gnawing away the years.”

Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) Spanish Baroque lyric poet

Mal te perdonarán a ti las horas;
las horas que limando están los días,
los días que royendo están los años.
"De la brevedad engañosa de la vida", line 12, cited from J. M. Cohen (ed.) The Penguin Book of Spanish Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962) p. 278. Translation from the same source.

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury photo

“He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself, for every man hath need to be forgiven.”

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648) Anglo-Welsh soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher

Source: The Autobiography, P. 34

George Holyoake photo

“Mr. Owen looked upon men through the spectacles of his own good-nature. He seldom took Lord Brougham's advice "to pick his men." He never acted on the maxim that the working class are as jealous of each other as the upper classes are of them. The resolution he displayed as a manufacturer he was wanting in as a founder of communities…. No leader ever took so little care as Mr, Owen in guarding his own reputation. He scarcely protested when others attached his name to schemes which were not his. The failure of Queenwood was not chargeable to him. When his advice was not followed he would say : "Well, gentlemen, I tell you what you ought to do. You differ from me. Carry out your own plans. Experience will show you who is right." When the affair went wrong then it was ascribed to him. Whatever failed under his name the public inferred failed through him. Mr. Owen was a general who never provided himself with a rear guard. While he was fighting in the front ranks priests might come up and cut off his commissariat. His own troops fell into pits against which he had warned them. Yet he would write his next dispatch without it occurring to him to mention his own defeat, and he would return to his camp without missing his army. Yet society is not so well served that it need hesitate to forgive the omissions of its generous friends. To Mr. Owen will be accorded the distinction of being a philosopher who devoted himself to founding a Science of Social Improvement and a philanthropist who gave his fortune to advance it. Association, which was but casual before his day, he converted into a policy and taught it as an art. He substituted Co-operation for coercion in the conduct ot industry and the willing co-operation of intelligence certain of its own reward, for sullen labour enforced by the necessity of subsistence, seldom to be relied on and never satisfied.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

George Jacob Holyoake in The History of Co-operation in England (1875; 1902).

Robert A. Heinlein photo
William Congreve photo
Elbert Hubbard photo

“The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927)

Phil McGraw photo

“There is power in forgiveness.”

Phil McGraw (1950) American television host, psychologist, actor and film producer
Paul Tillich photo
Evelyn Waugh photo
Michel Foucault photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Camille Paglia photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
William Robert Spencer photo

“Too late I stayed,—forgive the crime!
Unheeded flew the hours;
How noiseless falls the foot of time
That only treads on flowers.”

William Robert Spencer (1770–1834) British poet

Lines to Lady A. Hamilton, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time", William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well, Act v. Scene 3.

“It is my considered opinion that the so called Kashmir problem, we have been facing, since 1947 has never been viewed in a historical perspective. That is why it has defied solution so far, and its end is not in sight in the near future. Politicians at the helm of affairs during this nearly half a century have been living from hand to mouth and are waiting for Pakistan to face them with a fait accompli. Once againg they are out to hand over Kashmir and its people to be butchers who have devastated this fair land and destroyed its rich eulture. … It is therefore high time that we renounce this ritual and have a look at the problem in a historical perspective. I should like to warn that histories of Kashmir written by Kashmiri Hindus in modern times are worse than useless for this purpose. I have read almost all of them, only to be left wondering at the piteous state to which the Hindu mind in Kashmir has been reduced. I am not taking these histories into account except for bits and pieces which fall into the broad pattern. … What distinguishes the Hindu rulers of Kashmir from Hindu rulers elsewhere is that they continued to recruit in their army Turks from Central Asia without realizing that the Turks had become Islamicized and as such were no longer mere wage earners. One of Kashmir's Hindu rulers Harsha (1089-1101 CE) was persuaded by his Muslim favourites to plunder temple properties and melt down icons made of precious metal. Apologists of Islam have been highlighting this isolated incident in order to cover up the iconoclastic record of Islam not only in Kashmir but also in the rest of Bharatvarsha. At the same time they conceal the fact that Kashmir passed under the heel of Islam not as a result of the labours of its missionaries but due to a coup staged by an Islamicised army. … Small wonder that balance of farces in Kashmir should have continued to tilt in favour of Islamic imperialism till the last Hindu has been hounded out of his ancestral homeland. Small wonder that the hoodlums strut around not only in the valley but in the capital city of Delhi with airs of injured innocence. Small wonder that the Marxist-Muslim combine of scribes who dominate the media blame Jagmohan for arranging an overnight and enmasse exodus of the Hindus from the valley. (They cannot forgive Jagmohan for bringing back Kashmir to India at a time when the combine was hoping that Pakistan would face India with an accomplished fact.) Small wonder that what Arun Shourie has aptly described as the "Formula Factory"”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

the Nayars, the Puris, the Kotharis, the Dhars, the Haksars, the Tarkundes - should be busy devising ways for handing over the Kashmir Hindus to their age-old oppressors.
Kashmir: The Problem is Muslim Extremism by Sita Ram Goel https://web.archive.org/web/20080220033606/http://www.kashmir-information.com/Miscellaneous/Goel1.html

Muhammad photo
Brandon Boyd photo
Charlie Brooker photo

“Forgive my pants for remaining unshitten.”

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

Discussing Twilight in The Guardian 12 July 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/12/charlie-booker-twilights-unscary-monsters
Guardian columns

John Wilson photo

“You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;
You did mingle blame and praise,
Rusty Christopher.
When I learnt from whom it came,
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could _not_ forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.”

John Wilson (1785–1854) Scottish advocate, literary critic and author (1785-1854)

To Christopher North http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Early-Poems-of-Alfred-Lord-Tennyson10.html by Alfred Tennyson.
About

Laisenia Qarase photo

“The forgiveness of Christ is complete, and without condition. It is not dependent on an apology, or tied to a punishment.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Additional remarks about the proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, Address to the nation at the National Day of Prayer in Fiji combined church service http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/page_4615.shtml, Post Fiji Stadium, Suva, 15 May 2005

Francois Rabelais photo
Conor McGregor photo
Muhammad photo

“It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1011
Sunni Hadith

“He forgave these Tropemen, then felt contempt for himself for the presumption of extending forgiveness, then forgave again, then cursed his own vanity, forgave once more, condemned his presumption, and at last forgave even himself.”

Michael Bishop (1945) American writer

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 14, “Denouement: Ascent to the Acropolis” (p. 265)

Brigham Young photo

“There are sins that men commit for which they cannot receive forgiveness in this world, or in that which is to come, and if they had their eyes open to see their true condition, they would be perfectly willing to have their blood spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend to heaven as an offering for their sins, and the smoking incense would atone for their sins, whereas, if such is not the case, they will stick to them and remain upon them in the spirit world … I do know that there are sins committed, of such a nature that if the people did understand the doctrine of salvation, they would tremble because of their situation. And furthermore, I know that there are transgressors, who, if they knew themselves, and the only condition upon which they can obtain forgiveness, would beg of their brethren to shed their blood, that the smoke thereof might ascend to God as an offering to appease the wrath that is kindled against them, and that the law might have its course. I will say further; I have had men come to me and offer their lives to atone for their sins. It is true that the blood of the Son of God was shed for sins through the fall and those committed by men, yet men can commit sins which it can never remit. As it was in ancient days, so it is in our day.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 4:53 (September. 21, 1856)
Brigham Young describes the doctrine of Blood Atonement
1850s

Chris Murphy photo

“Your 'thoughts' should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your 'prayers' should be for forgiveness if you do nothing -- again.”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

senator has had enough of 'thoughts' and 'prayers'" http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/san-bernardino-chris-murphy-connecticut-tweet/"Connecticut, CNN Politics, 3 December 2015.

Aron Ra photo

“Science is a search for truth –whatever the truth may turn out to be, even if it’s evidently not what we wanted to believe it was. In science, it doesn’t matter what you believe; all that matters is why you believe it. This is why real science disallows faith, promising instead to remain objective, to follow wherever the evidence leads, and either correct or reject any and all errors along the way even if it challenges whatever we think we know now. But creationist organizations post written declarations of their unwavering obligation to uphold and defend their preconceived notions, declaring in advance their refusal to ever to let their minds be changed by any amount of evidence that is ever revealed. Anti-science evangelists display their statement of faith proudly on their own forums, as if admitting to a closed and dishonest mind wasn’t something to ashamed of or beg forgiveness for. They don’t want to do science. They want to un-do science! They try to segregate experimental science from historical science, ignoring the fact that both are based on empirical observations and both can be checked with testable hypotheses. Worse, they want to redefine science in general so that astrology, subjective convictions of faith, and excuses of magic can supplant the scientific method whenever necessary in defense of their beliefs. They’re only open to critical inquiry so long as that is not permitted to challenge the sacred scriptures nor vindicate any of the fields of study to which they’re already opposed. In short, everything science stands for, -or hopes to achieve- is threatened by the political agenda of these superstitious subversives.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc Youtube (April 19, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

John Fante photo