“On the 9/11 hijackers: "Now, I'm an atheist. I really don't believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a God. … It's human, universal, [it's] being able to think our way into the minds of others. As I said at the time, what those holy fools clearly lacked, or clearly were able to deny themselves, was the ability to enter into the minds of the people they were being so cruel to. Amongst their crimes, is, was, a failure of the imagination, of the moral imagination."”

—  Ian McEwan

From "Faith and Doubt At Ground Zero," Frontline, February, 2002
Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/mcewan.html

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "On the 9/11 hijackers: "Now, I'm an atheist. I really don't believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a God.…" by Ian McEwan?
Ian McEwan photo
Ian McEwan 80
British author 1948

Related quotes

Susan Sontag photo

“I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Salon interview (2001)

Leo Tolstoy photo

“People saw more and more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to their interests but also to their moral sense.”

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), III
Context: In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states. But the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in this peculiar, God-given right of the ruler. That belief withered in the same way and almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahman world, as well as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent times it has so faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonable understanding and the true religious feeling. People saw more and more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to their interests but also to their moral sense.

Cyrano de Bergerac photo

“Even though they, themselves, were material beings, they could show themselves to us only by taking on bodies that our senses were able to perceive.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Opal Tometi photo
Max Eastman photo

“A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.”

Max Eastman (1883–1969) American activist

The Masses (September 1917)

Richelle Mead photo
Jesse Ventura photo

“I want to believe that bin Laden and al-Qaeda were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, but now I have doubts. If they were responsible, I am beginning to think it was not without some knowledge of those impending attacks on our side.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 11 (p. 212)

Michael Shermer photo

“My thesis is that morality exists outside the human mind in the sense of being not just a trait of individual humans, but a human trait; that is, a human universal.”

[Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Share, Gossip, and Follow the Golden Rule, 1st edition, 2004, Times Books, New York, ISBN 0805075208, 18]

Malala Yousafzai photo

“I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Malala in Interview with a Pakistani Television network, 2011-12; Cited in: The girl who wanted to go to school http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/10/the-girl-who-wanted-to-go-to-school.html." The New Yorker by Basharat Peer, posted October 10, 2012
2010 -

Raymond Carver photo

Related topics