“Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.”
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
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Ambrose Bierce 204
American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabu… 1842–1914Related quotes
The American Mercury (May 1926)
1920s
Context: It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it—to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse. It is, of course, quite true that there is a region in which science and religion do not conflict. That is the region of the unknowable.
As quoted in Good Advice (1982) by William Safire and Leonard Safir. Original appearance in Holiday magazine, March 1956, pp. 40-51.
“Fear, that unknowable and all-powerful enemy, has invaded us all, like a secret army of shadows.”
Ch 2
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun
“Religion brought forth Prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.”
Magnalia Christi Americana http://books.google.com/books?id=49JdS7NoSawC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Magnalia+Christi+Americana#PPA63,M1 (The Ecclesiastical History of New England), s. 63 (1702). Mather, commenting on the spiritual condition of the colonies, cited an old saying in Latin: Religio peperit Divitias, et filia devoravit matrem.
“Mayonnaise, n. One of the sauces that serve the French in place of a state religion.”
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
La superstition est à la religion ce que l’astrologie est à l’astronomie, la fille très folle d’une mère très sage. Ces deux filles ont longtemps subjugué toute la terre.
"Whether it is useful to maintain the people in superstition," Treatise on Toleration (1763)
Citas