“The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.”

Book Two : The Church of Good Society, "The Canonization of Incompetence"
The Profits of Religion (1918)

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Upton Sinclair 50
American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist 1878–1968

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“It won’t matter to me at all whether the Church canonizes him or not. The important thing is that such a man existed.”

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Context: It’s a play about the life and martyrdom of a modern saint, who has just been canonized by the Church — or is it beatified? Which comes first? I’m not sure. Anyway, his name was Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Pole, and he died in Auschwitz. They were going to send some prisoners to a mine, where they would die of hunger and thirst. Father Kolbe offered to go instead of a man who had a wife and children and didn’t want to die. That man is still alive. … It won’t matter to me at all whether the Church canonizes him or not. The important thing is that such a man existed.

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“War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.”

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“Nobody, I believe, will deny, that we are to form our judgment of the true nature of the human mind, not from sloth and stupidity of the most degenerate and vilest of men, but from the sentiments and fervent desires of the best and wisest of the species.”

Robert Leighton (1611–1684) 17th century Archbishop of Glasgow, and Principal of the University of Edinburgh

Theological Lectures, No. 5, "Of the Immortality of the Soul", reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 514.

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