Preface to the Code of Hammurabi (translated by Leonard William King, 1910).
“It's light work for the gods who rule the skies
to exalt a mortal man or bring him low.”
XVI. 211–212 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
XVII, 4
The Kitáb-I-Asmá
Canto IV, stanza 39 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)
“Hail the heavenly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!”
"Hymn for Christmas-Day"
Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739)
Context: Hail the heavenly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Source: Civil Government : Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny (1889), p. 73
Context: Human government, the embodied effort of man to rule the world without God, ruled over by "the prince of this world," the devil. Its mission is to execute wrath and vengeance here on earth. Human government bears the same relation to hell as the church bears to heaven.
1B:8, In relation to righteousness and the overthrow of the tyrannous King Zhou of Shang, as translated in China (1904) by Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas, p. 8
Variant translations:
The ruffian and the villain we call a mere fellow. I have heard of killing the fellow Chou; I have not heard of killing a king.
As translated in Free China Review, Vol. 5 (1955)
I have merely heard of killing a villain Zhou, but I have not heard of murdering the ruler.
1B:8 as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 78
The Mencius
Context: He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain. I have heard of the cutting off of the villain Chow, but I have not heard of the putting of a ruler to death.
by Ung Huot, Ranariddh's successor as First Prime Minister of Cambodia in August 1997
[Conflict and Change in Cambodia, Kiernan, Ben and Hughes, Caroline, 2007, Routledge, 9780415385923], p. 36.
“A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name
Great Gorgon, Prince of darknesse and dead night.”
Canto 1, stanza 37
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I
“It’s about rejecting a god who looks like the ruling class.”
The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: If it were up to me, I would not define myself by the absence of something; "theist" is a believer, so with "atheist" you’re defining yourself by the absence of something. I think human beings work on yes, not on no. … humanist is a great term. …except that humanism sometimes is not seen as inclusive of spirituality. To me, spirituality is the opposite of religion. It’s the belief that all living things share some value. So I would include the word spiritual just because it feels more inclusive to me. Native Americans do this when they offer thanks to Mother Earth and praise the interconnectedness of “the two-legged and the four, the feathered and the clawed,” and so on. It’s lovely. … because it’s not about not believing. It’s about rejecting a god who looks like the ruling class.
