George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Real Time with Bill Maher, September 9, 2005
Interviews, Television Appearances
"Tai Ji Men: A Voyage to the Center of Conscience" https://bitterwinter.org/tai-ji-men-a-voyage-to-the-center-of-conscience/
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Real Time with Bill Maher, September 9, 2005
Interviews, Television Appearances
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (1983)
Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas
Introduction to My Correct Views on Everything
Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher
[2003, The Play of Masks, World Wisdom, 12, 978-0-94153214-3]
Miscellaneous, Religion
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
Preface; The Sacredness of Human Life
1930s, On the Rocks (1933)
Context: In law we draw a line between the killing of human animals and non-human ones, setting the latter apart as brutes. This was founded on a general belief that humans have immortal souls and brutes none. Nowadays more and more people are refusing to make this distinction. They may believe in The Life Everlasting and The Life to Come; but they make no distinction between Man and Brute, because some of them believe that brutes have souls, whilst others refuse to believe that the physical materializations and personifications of The Life Everlasting are themselves everlasting. In either case the mystic distinction between Man and Brute vanishes; and the murderer pleading that though a rabbit should be killed for being mischievous he himself should be spared because he has an immortal soul and a rabbit has none is as hopelessly out of date as a gentleman duellist pleading his clergy. When the necessity for killing a dangerous human being arises, as it still does daily, the only distinction we make between a man and a snared rabbit is that we very quaintly provide the man with a minister of religion to explain to him that we are not killing him at all, but only expediting his transfer to an eternity of bliss.
Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher
Pg 144
History and Illusion in Politics (2001)