Quotes about morale
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“The theatre is supremely fitted to say: "Behold! These things are." Yet most dramatists employ it to say: "This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action."”

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American playwright and novelist

Writers at Work interview (1958)

Truth, Learning

“Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Love, Life, Soul

“Nothing can better express the feelings of the scientist towards the great unity of the laws of nature than in Immanuel Kant's words: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing awe: the stars above me and the moral law within me."… Would he, who did not yet know of the evolution of the world of organisms, be shocked that we consider the moral law within us not as something given, a priori, but as something which has arisen by natural evolution, just like the laws of the heavens?”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility

World, Law, Feeling, Star

“Since I have an aversion to movies in which people say grace at the dinner table (not to the practice but to how movies use it to establish the moral strength of a household), the opening night montage of Sunday-night supper in one home after another in Waxahachie, Texas in 1935 — a whole community saying grace — made me expect the worst.”

Pauline Kael book State of the Art

"Mirrors," review of Places in the Heart (1984-10-15), p. 246.
State of the Art (1985)

People, Home, Communication, Night

“I genuinely believe that the Catholic church is not, to put it at its mildest, a force for good in the world… We certainly don’t need the stigmatisation, the victimisation that leads to the playground bullying when people say: “You’re a disordered, morally evil individual.””

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

That’s not nice, it isn’t nice.
"The Catholic church is a force for good in the world", November 7th 2009, Abridged Intelligence² debate speech.
2000s

People, World, Evil

“.. the gift of Orthodoxia : The call by the Christ not to be just good moral and ethical beings, which is where the western Churches stop- but to go beyond that, to be 'theanthropic", to reflect the generosity and magnificence and beauty of the Christ.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

Beauty, Christ

“A moral coward, you see, is simply someone who has read the fine print on the back of his Birth Certificate and seen the little clause which says "You can't win."”

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985) British art dealer

Source: The Mortdecai Trilogy, Something Nasty in the Woodshed (1976), Ch. 16.

Birth, Reading

“Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.”

Thomas Hardy book Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays, ch. XLIII
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

Courage, Patience

“Authentic love is obviously something good. When we love we become most fully human. But people often consider themselves loving when actually they are possessive or manipulative. People sometimes treat others as objects to satisfy their own needs. How easy it is to be deceived by the many voices in our society that advocate a permissive approach to sexuality, without regard for modesty, self-respect or the moral values that bring quality into human relationships! This is worship of a false god; instead of bringing life, it brings death.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2008, Disadvantaged Youth (18 July 2008)

Love, Life, Death, God

“Look at the men themselves who lead in this cause. Is there one among them with whom you would trust yourself in the dark? Can you have, I will not say, any confidence in their opinions and principles, but any doubt of the wickedness of their intentions? Look at them, at their characters, at their conduct. What is there more base, and more detestable, more at variance with all tact and decency, as well as all morality, truth, and honour? A cause so supported cannot be a good cause. They may use Burdett as an instrument for a time, and you also if you place yourself in their trammels, but depend upon it, if a convulsion follows their attempt to work upon the minds of the people, inflamed as they now are by distress, for which your reform will afford a very inadequate remedy, I shall not precede you many months on the scaffold, which you will have assisted in preparing for us both.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Letter to General Sir Robert Thomas Wilson (October 1819) on the Radicals, quoted in M. R. Brock, Lord Liverpool and Liberal Toryism. 1820-1827 (Cambridge University Press, 1941), pp. 117-118.
1810s

Men, People, Truth, Confidence

“Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: "Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being." Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 23

World, Imagination

“There's no one so self-righteous as someone policing someone else's morality.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Musings of Anita Blake; p. 627
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Incubus Dreams (2004)

“For anyone seeking meaning for his life a figure from Greek mythology comes to mind. It is that of Atlas, bearing with endless perseverance the weight of the heavens on his back. — Atlas, resolutely bearing his burden and accepting his responsibility that gives us the example we seek. To seek out and accept responsibility; to persevere; to be committed to excellence; to be creative and courageous; to be unrelenting in the pursuit of intellectual development; to maintain high standards of ethics and morality; and to bring these basic principles of existence to bear through active participation in life — these are some of my ideas on the goals which must be met to achieve meaning and purpose in life.
And finally, the man who knows his purpose in life accepts praise humbly. He knows whatsoever talents we has were given him by the Lord and that these talents must be developed and used. In this way man renders thanks for the Lord's gift — and finds meaning in his life.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1974)

Life, Way, Idea, Courage

“Yet all this is not ressentiment. These are only stages in the development of its sources. Revenge, envy, the impulse to detract, spite, *Schadenfreude*, and malice lead to ressentiment only if there occurs neither a moral self-conquest (such as genuine forgiveness in the case of revenge) nor an act or some other adequate expression of emotion (such as verbal abuse or shaking one's fist), and if this restraint is caused by a pronounced awareness of impotence. There will be no ressentiment if he who thirsts for revenge really acts and avenges himself, if he who is consumed by hatred harms his enemy, gives him “a piece of his mind,” or even merely vents his spleen in the presence of others. Nor will the envious fall under the dominion of ressentiment if he seeks to acquire the envied possession by means of work, barter, crime, or violence. Ressentiment can only arise if these emotions are particularly powerful and yet must be suppressed because they are coupled with the feeling that one is unable to act them out—either because of weakness, physical or mental, or because of fear. Through its very origin, ressentiment is therefore chiefly confined to those who serve and are dominated at the moment, who fruitlessly resent the sting of authority. When it occurs elsewhere, it is either due to psychological contagion—and the spiritual venom of ressentiment is extremely contagious—or to the violent suppression of an impulse which subsequently revolts by “embittering” and “poisoning” the personality. If an ill-treated servant can vent his spleen in the antechamber, he will remain free from the inner venom of ressentiment, but it will engulf him if he must hide his feelings and keep his negative and hostile emotions to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Hostility, Fear, Feeling, Forgiveness

“Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)
Context: Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.

Behavior, Selfishness

“Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

David Brooks. "Money for Idiots," http://archive.li/EzXTi The New York Times, 19 February 2009. 2000s

People, Justice, Idea, Decision

“[The spider of sin] sleeps quietly, unseen by the human eye. How do we then bring him into the light? The answer is the stick of God's Law. It is the only means of revealing him. If we open up the Moral Law, it will cause his ugly head to appear… Later, if you are willing, we will lure him out into the open and with the help of God, spray him with the 'gospel spray' of the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

God, Law, Sleep, Light

“It remained difficult for me to understand how some people are simply born mentally deformed, lacking all the natural moral restraints and imagination which dictate the actions of most of us, however partially. Such creatures have learned from childhood to ape the appropriate sentiments when it suits them, to charm or bully their opponents, to agree to anything, to tell any lie and to pursue their own ends with implacable determination.
“Such men and women are the true aliens amongst you and it is ironic how frequently we come to rule you. We use your very best instincts and deepest emotions against you. We convince you that we alone can satisfy your need for security and comfort and then we drain you dry of everything save perpetual terror. Ha, ha, ha!””

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 389)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Women, Men, People, Lie

“We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter I, Section 9, pg. 50

“The use of force is non-moral, that is to say, it is good or bad depending on the motive behind its use and the effects of it application. To reason by analogy from the justification of the use of force to a justification of war is to endanger sound decisions and may lead to disastrous consequences.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

"What is War?" (1924)

War, Motivation, Decision, Dependency

“The evident problem with democracy today is that the state is pre-empting – or 'crowding out', as the economists say – our moral judgments. Rulers are adding moral judgments to the expanding schedule of powers they exercise. Nor does the state deal merely with principles. It is actually telling its subjects to do very specific things. Yet decisions about how we live are what we mean by 'freedom,' and freedom is incompatible with a moralizing state. That is why I am provoked to ask the question: can the moral life survive democracy?”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

Introduction p. 3-4
The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

Life, Exercises, Democracy, Question

“For some reason which escapes me, there seems to be a feeling now that we have a moral duty to interfere in foreign disputes, and tell other countries how they should govern themselves, especially if so-called democracy is thought to be in danger.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

The Day of the Pygmies. p. 91-92.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Feeling, Democracy, Country

“I flatter my self to have demonstrated that, neither the Friendly Qualities and kind Affections that are natural to Man, nor the real Virtues he is capable of acquiring by Reason and Self-Denial, are the Foundation of Society; but that what we call Evil in this World, Moral as well as Natural, is the grand Principle that makes us sociable Creatures, the solid Basis, the Life and Support of all Trades and Employments without Exception: That there we must look for the true Origin of all Arts and Sciences, and that the Moment Evil ceases, the Society must be spoiled, if not totally dissolved.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

"A Search into the Nature of Society", p. 428
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Life, World, Art, Support

“Ziegler said, “You know the story in the Bible, the story of Abraham and Isaac?”
“Of course.”
“God instructs Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice. Isaac makes it as far as the chopping block before God changes his mind.”
Yes. Jacob had always imagined God a little appalled at Abraham’s willingness to cooperate.
Ziegler said, “What’s the moral of the story?”
“Faith.”
“Hardly,” Ziegler said. “Faith has nothing to do with it. Abraham never doubted the existence of God—how could he? The evidence was ample. His virtue wasn’t faith, it was fealty. He was so simplemindedly loyal that he would commit even this awful, terrible act. He was the perfect foot soldier. The ideal pawn. Abraham’s lesson: fealty is rewarded. Not morality. The fable makes morality contingent. Don’t go around killing innocent people, that is, unless you're absolutely certain God want you to. It’s a lunatic’s credo.
“Isaac, on the other hand, learns something much more interesting. He learns that neither God nor his own father can be trusted. Maybe it makes him a better man than Abraham. Suppose Isaac grows up and fathers a child of his own, and God approaches him and makes the same demand. One imagines Isaac saying, ’No. You can take him if you must, but I won’t slaughter my son for you.’ He’s not the good and faithful servant his father was. But he is, perhaps, a more wholesome human being.””

Robert Charles Wilson (1953) author

The Fields of Abraham (pp. 21-22)
The Perseids and Other Stories (2000)

God, People, Faith, Imagination

“We have propounded our beliefs in various ways, and according to various doctrines. Often we have aroused the passions of men to murder and war. This was perfectly proper, since it brought the problems of morality and religion to their highest and most exquisite pitch, and gave many complicated matters for us theologians to talk about.
We argued always, and we published our various dissenting opinions. But we argued like lawyers in a court, and nobody in his right mind listens to a lawyer. Those were the days of our pride, and we never noticed that men had ceased to pay attention to us.”

Robert Sheckley book Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 6 “Joenes and the Three Truck Drivers” (p. 50)

Men, War, Religion, Way

“What then is the moral of Churchill’s life? He was the twentieth century’s great man, but we must sharply circumscribe his greatness. Because he drew the sword from the stone in 1940, what he did before and after seems admirable. Through his steadfast stance, Churchill rallied the English to die with honor—therefore they deserved to win. Whoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whoever shall lose his life shall preserve it (Luke 17:33). Yet were it not for this one courageous triumph, we might now say of him: Never had one man done so little with so much.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Churchill’s Finest Hour (2009)

Life, Courage

“Saint Paul says, with regard to charity, “He that will not work, let him not eat.” And it says that a man and his faith are to be judged by his responsibility towards them of his own household, his family in particular and the Christian community and he that is not charitable here is worse than an infidel and has denied the faith. Well, the biblical perspective stresses that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. We are to be mindful of his needs. And it puts it on a personal and a moral level. When you put welfare in the place of charity and it becomes a function of a vast bureaucracy to administer it is depersonalized. It no longer considers the individual. It is interested in dehumanizing it, because the statist perspective is not moral nor personal. Its goal is statist power, statist authority, the predominance of the state in every and any sphere where it has controls.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Christian Charity vs Welfarism (September 4, 1996)

Love, Family, Faith, Communication

“Since only actions aimed at perceived benefit to others were, to Aristotle's mind, morally approved, actions solely for personal gain must be bad. That commercial considerations may not have affected the daily activities of most people does not mean however that over any prolonged period their very lives did not depend on the functioning of a trade that enabled them to buy essentials. That production for gain which Aristotle denounced as unnatural had -- long before his time -- already become the foundation of an extended order far transcending the known needs of other persons.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Source: 1980s and later, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 46

People, Time, Dependency, Personality

“When we speak of general war, we don't mean real progress on the road of freedom, the real, moral, and social advancement of man, achieved by force. This may be the intention, but how rarely is it the result of general war! We mean this:—That the face of nature is stained with human gore—we mean that taxation is increased and industry diminished—we know that it means that burdens unreasonable and untold are entailed on late posterity—we know that it means that demoralization is let loose, that families are broken up, that lusts become unbridled in every country to which that war is extended.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Manchester (12 October 1853), quoted in The Times (13 October 1853), p. 7.
1850s

War, Family, Nature, Freedom

“It is my contention that limited government is a floating abstraction which has never been concretized by anyone; that a limited government must either initiate force or cease being a government; that the very concept of limited government is an unsuccessful attempt to integrate two mutually contradictory elements: statism and voluntarism. Hence, if this can be shown, epistemological clarity and moral consistency demands the rejection of the institution of government totally, resulting in free market anarchism, or a purely voluntary society.”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

“Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand,” 1969

“We marched him to the turfy shack where he lived with his parents and while the youth sulked Petronius Longus put the whole moral issue in succinct terms to them: Ollia’s father was a legionary veteran who had served in Egypt and Syria for over twenty years until he left with double pay, three medals, and a diploma that made Ollia legitimate; he now ran a boxers’ training school where he was famous for his high-minded attitude and his fighters were notorious for their loyalty to him… The old fisherman was a toothless, hapless, faithless cove you would not trust too near you with a filleting knife, but whether from fear or simple cunning he co-operated eagerly. The lad agreed to marry the girl and since Silvia would never abandon Ollia here, we decided that the fisherboy had to come back with us to Rome. His relations looked impressed by this result. We accepted it as the best we could achieve.”

Lindsey Davis book Shadows in Bronze

Shadows in Bronze

Youth, Fear, School, Girl

“O brave youth, how good for thee it were couldst thou be made to understand how infinitely precious are thy school years—years when thou hast leisure to grow, when new worlds break in upon thee, and thou fashionest thy being in the light of the ideals of truth and goodness and beauty! If now thou dost not fit thyself to become free and whole, thou shalt, when the doors of this fair mother-house of the mind, close behind thee, be driven into ways that lead to bondage, be compelled to do that which cripples and dwarfs; for the work whereby men gain a livelihood involves mental and moral mutilation, unless it be done in the spirit of religion and culture. Ah! well for thee, canst thou learn while yet there is time that it will profit thee nothing to become the possessor of millions, if the price thou payest is thy manhood.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 58-59

Men, Truth, Youth, World

“Men and women were created to be jointly the guarantee of the future of the humanity — not only a physical guarantee, but also a moral one.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2003

Women, Men, Future

“Thank God for giving you this world as a moral gymnasium to help your development, but never imagine you can help the world.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

God, World, Imagination, Help

“Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature" failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Concurring, Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1 (1958).
Judicial opinions

Wisdom, War, Angels, Way

“Thus, fascism adopted the economic aspect of liberalism but completely denied its philosophical principles and the intellectual and moral heritage of modernity.”

Zeev Sternhell (1935) Israeli historian

Source: The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, 1994, p.7

“This administration came out opposing military tribunals, wanting to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York, reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights and trying mightily […] to close Guantanamo. Yet alongside this exquisite delicacy about the rights of terrorists is the campaign to kill them in their beds. You festoon your prisoners with rights — but you take no prisoners. The morality is perverse. Which is why the results are so mixed.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, May 31, 2012, "Barack Obama: Drone Warrior" http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obama-drone-warrior/2012/05/31/gJQAr6zQ5U_story.html at washingtonpost.com. 2010s, 2012

Reading, Christmas

“It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.”

H.L. Mencken book The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908/1913)
1900s

Books, Age, Faith

“Business is the real test of the moral life.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 17.

Life, Business

“It is imagination that has taught man the moral sense of color, of contour, of sound and of scent. It created, in the beginning of the world, analogy and metaphor. It disassembles creation, and with materials gathered and arranged by rules whose origin is only to be found in the very depths of the soul, it creates a new world, it produces the sensation of the new. As it has created the world (this can be said, I believe, even in the religious sense), it is just that it should govern it.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

C'est l'imagination qui a enseigné à l'homme le sens moral de la couleur, du contour, du son et du parfum. Elle a créé, au commencement du monde, l'analogie et la métaphore. Elle décompose toute la création, et, avec les matériaux amassés et disposés suivant des règles dont on ne peut trouver l'origine que dans le plus profond de l'âme, elle crée un monde nouveau, elle produit la sensation du neuf. Comme elle a créé le monde (on peut bien dire cela, je crois, même dans un sens religieux), il est juste qu'elle le gouverne. "Lettres à M. le Directeur de La revue française," III: La reine des facultés http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Salon_de_1859_%28Curiosit%C3%A9s_esth%C3%A9tiques%29#III._.E2.80.94_La_reine_des_facult.C3.A9s Salon de 1859 (1859)

World, Color, Soul, Imagination

“A Man like him (Tan Zuoren) is the back bone of our nation, is our nation's salt and calcium, is the foundation stone of the rebuilding of nation's morals; the beginning of the rebuilding of the society. To jail such a person, is to jail the nation's conscience.”

Cui Weiping (1956) Chinese film critic

自发而美好的思想感情 ——为谭作人先生呼吁 (11 April 2009) http://www.cuiweiping.net/blogs/cuiweiping/archives/133594.aspx

Personality

“Then the works of Max Weber, first translated from the German in the 1940s — he wrote around 1910, incredibly — began to find their way into social science thought. At first, with his celebration of the efficiency of bureaucracy, he was received with only reluctant respect, and even with hostility. All writers were against bureaucracy. But it turned out, surprisingly, that managers were not. When asked, they acknowledged that they preferred clear lines of communication, clear specifications of authority and responsibility, and clear knowledge of whom they were responsible to. They were as wont to say "there ought to be a rule about this," as to say "there are too many rules around here," as wont to say "next week we've got to get organized," as to say "there is too much red tape." Gradually, studies began to show that bureaucratic organizations could change faster than non-bureaucratic ones, and that morale could be higher where there was clear evidence of bureaucracy.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, "The short and glorious history of organizational theory", 1973, p. 6

Hostility, Way, Communication, Knowledge

“The truths of naturalism do not satisfy the moral and religious nature.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: Accepting the Universe (1920), p.301

Truth, Nature

“To make peace in the world secure, the United Nations must have readily at its disposal, as a result of firm commitments undertaken by all of its members, military strength of sufficient dimensions to make it certain that it can meet aggressive military force with international military force, speedily and conclusively. If that kind of strength is made available to the United Nations […] in my view that strength will never again be challenged in war and therefore need never be employed. But military strength will not be enough. The moral position of the United Nations must ever be strong and unassailable; it must stand steadfastly, always, for the right.”

Ralph Bunche (1904–1971) American diplomat

Some Reflections on Peace in Our Time (1950)

War, World, Peace, Strong

““HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?”
That’s the question you should always ask believers when they make unsupported assertions, ranging from “God is loving” to “Our souls live on after death.” The answer will always be one of two things: “The Bible says so,” or “I just know it to be true.” Neither of those are rational answers, but they satisfy the religious.
It is in fact the “how-do-you-know-that” query that really distinguishes New Atheism from Old. While atheists have always decried the lack of evidence for theism, it is the infusion of scientists and science-friendly people into atheism, starting with Carl Sagan and continuing on to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Pinker, and Dennett, that has made us realize that religious dogmas are in fact hypotheses, and you need reasons and evidence for accepting them. If you have none, then you have no reason to believe in God.
Nevertheless, religious dogma does change, but not because theology has found better reasons. It’s because a.) science has shown the dogma to be false (Genesis, Adam and Eve, creation, the Exodus, etc.) or b.) secular morality has shown that the tenets of religious belief are no longer supportable”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

hell as a place of fire, limbo, discrimination against gays, the Mormons’ refusal to let blacks be priests, etc. " Catholic official says that angels exist but are wingless http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/catholic-official-says-that-angels-exist-but-are-wingless/" December 21, 2013

Love, Death, God, People

“Unfortunately, pragmatism is not always good politics. The greatest asset of mid-20th century social democracy—its willingness to compromise its own core beliefs in the name of balance, tolerance, fairness and freedom—now looks more like weakness: a loss of nerve in the face of changed circumstances. We find it hard to look past those compromises to recall the qualities that informed progressive thought in the first place: what the early 20th century syndicalist Edouard Berth termed “a revolt of the spirit against... a world in which man was threatened by a monstrous moral and metaphysical materialism.””

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 4 : Goodbye to All That?

World, Democracy, Freedom, Change

“Tying morality to religion is a little like transporting a precious cargo on a sinking ship. What happens when the child grows up and starts doubting the factual claims of the religion? The cargo may be lost with the ship.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 287

Religion

“The fundamental tenet of the Védántí school, to which in a more modern age the incomparable Sancara was a firm and illustrious adherent, consisted, not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but, in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending, that it has no essence independent of mental perception, that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms, that external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing if the divine energy, which alone sustains them, were suspended but for a moment; an opinion which Epicharmus and Plato seem to have adopted, and which has been maintained in the present century with great elegance, but with little publick applause; partly because it has been misunderstood, and partly because it has been misapplied by the false reasoning of some unpopular writers, who are said to have disbelieved in the moral attributes of God, whose omnipresence, wisdom, and goodness are the basis of the Indian philosophy… [N]othing can be farther removed from impiety than a system wholly built on the purest devotion; and the inexpressible difficulty, which any man, who shall make the attempt, will assuredly find in giving a satisfactory definition of material substance, must induce us to deliberate with coolness, before we censure the learned and pious restorer of the ancient Véda; though we cannot but admit, that, if the common opinions of mankind be the criterion of philosophical truth, we must adhere to the system of Gotama, which the Bráhmens of this province almost universally follow.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

II. pp. 238-239
"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Wisdom, God, Truth, Age

“We call him a hero who maintains himself, single-handed, against superior numbers. We call him a master-horseman who sits a fiery and vicious steed, guiding him at will. And in like manner, we call him a moral hero who conquers the enemies within his own breast — and we admire and revere the soul which can ride its own passions and force them into obedience to the dictates of reason.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Soul, Passion

“We continue to live in ignorance concerning the harm we inflict on animals; very few of us have ever visited an industrial breeding site or a slaughterhouse. We maintain a kind of moral schizophrenia that has us lavishing pampering our pets and at the same time planting our forks in the pigs that have been sent to the slaughter by the millions, even though they are in no way less conscious, less sensitive to pain, or less intelligent than our cats and dogs.”

Matthieu Ricard (1946) French writer and Buddhist monk

Introduction, p. 4
A Plea for the Animals (2014)

Pain, Dogs, Way, Intelligence

“The terrorists have won… What was their goal 15 long, sad years ago? To strip from the world's greatest power, their traditions of growing tolerance. To hamstring the international interests of a country that barely stuck to the international double-white line of the moral road, but came closer than any other. To take our energies from trying… to help the world move forward, and instead make us direct those energies inward, at one another, within our own borders.”

Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator

"The Terrorists Have Won" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYHEmzIJwo (November 2016), The Closer, YouTube

World, Sadness, Help, Country

“What you won't hear, except from me, is that 'Let the good times roll' is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society. … In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan — because, when you get down to it, [the] Japanese aren't blacks.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Racial Reality And The New Orleans Nightmare https://archive.is/20121211061614/www.vdare.com/sailer/050903_new_orleans.htm, VDARE, September 3, 2005

Education, Time

“I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

As quoted in "The US and Israel Stand Alone" in Der Spiegel (15 August 2006) http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,431793,00.html Post-Presidency

Thinking

“There are people who have an instinctive yet perfect moral judgment, who can perform the most complex ethical calculations like an Indian peasant can sometimes perform astounding mathematical feats in a matter of seconds. Lily was such a person. I craved her approval.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

People, Mathematics, Personality, Perfection

“I always maintain that the great service that education renders to democracy is the same service that we hope to gain from religion. They work, or ought to work, hand in hand. It is to keep the moral weights and measures true to standard; and not only true to standard—true to the highest standard. And let us have that applied impartially to all classes of the community from the top to the bottom. There are those who would empty the conception of the state of all moral qualities, and they would confine education to a bread-and-butter business. If I may paraphrase Nurse Cavell's dying words, such patriotism is not enough. Moral standards, applied as I suggest, are the surest way to achieve that fundamental social unity which is postulated by democracy.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 79-80.
1927

Education, Religion, Hope, Way

“Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)

Country

“The Japanese people, since the war, have undergone the greatest reformation recorded in modern history. With a commendable will, eagerness to learn, and marked capacity to understand, they have, from the ashes left in war's wake, erected in Japan an edifice dedicated to the supremacy of individual liberty and personal dignity; and in the ensuing process there has been created a truly representative government committed to the advance of political morality, freedom of economic enterprise, and social justice. Politically, economically, and socially Japan is now abreast of many free nations of the earth and will not again fail the universal trust… I sent all four of our occupation divisions to the Korean battlefront without the slightest qualms as to the effect of the resulting power vacuum upon Japan. The results fully justified my faith. I know of no nation more serene, orderly, and industrious, nor in which higher hopes can be entertained for future constructive service in the advance of the human race.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

1950s, Farewell address to Congress (1951)

War, People, Faith, Justice

“Stirner and Nietzsche … reveal how prone morality is to being used as a means of rationalization, a cloak for concealing violent and brutish passions, and making their sadistic expression a virtue.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 38

Passion

“Vegetarians and vegans are not morally superior to everyone else. We're simply healthier, and a hell of a lot better for the environment around us. Of course, just because we're not morally superior doesn't mean we're not on the side of the angels. I believe we are. After all, we're practitioners of a diet that's better for people, better for animals, and better for the environment.”

Howard F. Lyman (1938) American activist

Source: No More Bull! (2005), Ch. 5: Message for My Meat-Eating Friends, p. 78

People, Angels, Hell, Animals

“In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved future…. And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, "Thank God, I — I also — am an American!"”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Source: On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843), p. 107

God, Youth, Age, Future

“For Rawls simultaneously appeals to the natural outlook of a democratic society to found his conception of the person, and to his conception of the person to found the basic structure of a democratic society. The warrant of the doctrine of two moral powers is that it ‘suits’ a society in which justice is conceived as fairness; and the warrant of justice as fairness, with its schedule of fundamental principles and primary goods, is that it ‘protects’ the exercise of the two moral powers. The attenuated idea of a person is the theoretical plinth of a desirable constitution, determining what count as primary goods ‘in advance’ of any further requirements of social life – yet is also no more than an ideological reflex of the culture it is supposed to generate. In a vicious circle, public arrangements are deduced from personal capacities defined as adapted to public arrangements.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Source: Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 4. "Designing Consensus, John Rawls" (1994), p. 108

Life, Justice, Exercises, Idea

“We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be; make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline. He will even become more beastly, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to appear.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

War, Peace, Feeling, Home

“The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left … having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 168.

Age, Peace, Universe

“Like most philosophers, Kant worked to shore up the conventional beliefs of his time. Schopenhauer did the opposite. Accepting the arguments of Hume and Kant that the world is unknowable, he concluded that both the world and the individual subject that imagines it knows it are maya, dreamlike constructions with no basis in reality. … Schopenhauer accepted the sceptical side of Kant's philosophy and turned it against him. Kant demonstrated that we are trapped in the world of phenomena and cannot know things in themselves. Schopenhauer went one step further and observed that we ourselves belong in the world of appearances. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer was ready to follow his thoughts wherever they led. Kant argued that unless we accept that we are autonomous, freely choosing selves we cannot make sense of our moral experience. Schopenhauer responded that our actual experience is not of freely choosing the way we live but of being driven along by our bodily needs - by fear, hunger and, above all, sex.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: Schopenhauer's Crux (p. 42-3)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Hunger, World, Fear, Sex

“This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war. This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a New World Order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.”

Tam Dalyell (1932–2017) Scottish politician

Sunday Herald, September 15th, 2002

Love, Men, War, World

“A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature — a good bit, of course, but a bit only — in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning
Literary Studies (1879)

Nature

“He knew that the world, and Annie as the representative of the world, whatever praise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting word nor feel the fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recompense of an artist who, symbolizing a lofty moral by a material trifle,—converting what was earthly to spiritual gold,—had won the beautiful into his handiwork. Not at this latest moment was he to learn that the reward of all high performance must be sought within itself, or sought in vain.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

World, Beauty, Feeling, Learning

“Now, take as an illustration the Rock of Gibraltar. Many of you have been there, I dare say. I have; and among the things that interested me were the monkeys on the top of it, and a good many people at the bottom, who were living on English taxes. Well, the Rock of Gibraltar was taken and retained when we were not at war with Spain, and it was retained contrary to every law of morality and honour.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Birmingham (18 December 1862), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1869), p. 214.
1860s

War, People, Law

“In the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests, of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of the inhabitants.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 11
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Water

“I have spoken of the advantages of leisure and opportunity for improvement, as of a right to which you were entitled. I must now remind you that every right involves a responsibility. The greater our freedom from external restrictions, the more do we become the rightful subjects of the moral law within us. The less our accountability to man, the greater our accountability to a higher power. Such a thing as irresponsible right has no existence in this world. Even in the formation of opinion, which is of all things the freest from human control, and for which something like irresponsible right has been claimed, we are deeply answerable for the use we make of our reason, our means of information, and our various opportunities of arriving at a correct judgment. It is true, that so long as we observe the established rules of society, we are not to be called upon before any human court to answer for the application of our leisure; but so much the more are we bound by a higher than human law to redeem to the full our opportunities. Tho application of this general truth to the circumstances of your present position is obvious. A limited portion of leisure in the evening of each day is allotted to you, and it is incumbent upon you to consider how you may best employ it.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

George Boole, "Right Use of Leisure," cited in: James Hogg Titan Hogg's weekly instructor, (1847) p. 250 : Address on the Right Use of Leisure to the members of tho Lincoln Early Closing Association.
1840s

Truth, World, Law, Freedom

“There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Es gibt kein äußeres Zeichen der Höflichkeit, das nicht einen tiefen sittlichen Grund hätte. Die rechte Erziehung wäre, welche dieses Zeichen und den Grund zugleich überlieferte.
Bk. II, Ch. 5, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 195
Elective Affinities (1809)

Education

“The sixth edition [of the Moral Sentiments] includes a whole new part, on the character of virtue, and some drastic revision elsewhere. My co-editor of the work, the late Professor A. L. Macfie, was apt to say in consequence that the sixth edition is a different book. That is an exaggeration, but the sixth edition is certainly a much altered book.”

D. D. Raphael (1916–2015) Philosopher

The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy (2007), Ch. 1: Two Versions

Books, Parting

“Whatever may be the case in a Court of morals, there is no legal obligation on the vendor to inform the purchaser that he is under a mistake, not induced by the act of the vendor.”

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn (1813–1896) British judge

Smith v. Hughes (1871), L. R. 6 Q. B. 607.

“There is, I think, no more nutritive or suggestive truth… than that of the perfect dependence of the "moral" sense of a work of art on the amount of felt life concerned in producing it. The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and the degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady.
Prefaces (1907-1909)

Life, Truth, Art, Spring

“It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at this amazing creation and see the genius of the Creator. A child can know that. Your stumbling block isn't intellectual as you maintain… it's moral.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

“As to the essence of human nature, what our national experience has made plain is this, that to remain in a continually exalted moral condition is not human nature. That has happened which was prophesied: we have gone down hill from the Revolution until now; we are absorbed in "mere money-getting."”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

Anarchism & American Traditions (1908)

Money, Nature

“I had learned, after all, to trust neither religion nor politics and to put my faith in the realities of metal, wood and steam, in practical engineering, whose rules could neither be changed nor made the subject of morality, so why should I show reverence for mere antiquity?”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 5 (p. 262)

Faith, Religion, Reality, Learning

“Manner and morals have improved, improved wages and world travel during the war have had effect, and the farm labourer now is an intelligent, self respecting workman, on a level at least with the town artisan. The village rustic of the past no longer exists outside of the comic papers.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

October Chapter The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed Julian Shuckburgh Century Hutchinson 1986
The Peverel Papers

War, World, Travel, Intelligence

“But the God hypothesis for morality and altruism has its own problems. It fails, for example, to specify exactly which moral judgments were instilled in people by God and which, if any, might rest on secular reason. It doesn’t explain why slavery, torture, and disdain for women and strangers were considered proper behaviors not too long ago, but are now seen as immoral. For if anything is true, God-given morality should remain constant over time and space. In contrast, if morality reflects a malleable social veneer on an evolutionary base, it should change as society changes. And it has.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 177

Women, God, People, Behavior

“When someone disagrees with you on a moral point you assume that he is one step behind in his thinking, and he assumes that he has gone one step ahead. But I take both parts, O'Hara, leapfrogging myself along the great moral issues, refuting myself and rebutting the refutation towards a truth that must be the compound of two opposite half-truths. And you never reach it because there is always something more to say.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Source: Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966), Ch. 2: A Couple of Deaths and Exits.

Truth, Thinking, Parting

“To punish public outrages on morals and religion is unquestionably within the competence of rulers. But when a government, not content with requiring decency, requires sanctity, it oversteps the bounds which mark its proper functions. And it may be laid down as a universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

"Leigh Hunt" (1841), in Critical...Essays 2:509
Attributed

Religion, Universe

“Even if animal experiments did result in a cure for AIDS, of which there is no chance, I’d be against it on moral grounds.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

McGraw, Michael, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "PETA and AIDS research" http://www.cnsnews.com/letterstotheeditor/letters_archive/2006/letters20060515.asp, Letters to the Editor, CNSNews.com, May 15, 2006. On animal research and activism against it

Chance, Animals

“It would appear that practical morality consists in making the meeting of men and women as casual as that of animals.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Apologia Pro Scriptis Meis. Memoirs of My Dead Life http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8mmdl10.txt (1906)

Women, Men, Appearance, Animals

“So the moral of this story is: Who are you to judge?
There's only one true judge, and that's God
So chill, and let my Father do His job.”

Cheryl James (1966) American rapper and actress

"None of Your Business"

God

“Israel, our great friend and the one true democracy in the Middle East has been snubbed and criticized by an administration that lacks moral clarity… President Obama has not been a friend to Israel. He has treated Iran with tender love and care and made it a great power.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, April, Foreign Policy Speech (27 April 2016)

Love, Democracy

“This enlarged view of the radical cause … allows us to connect leftism and modernism, the radical politics of institutional reform and the radical politics of personal relations, a political vision obsessed with issues of dependence and domination and a moral vision concerned with the inability of the individual to gain practical, emotional, or even cognitive access to other people without forfeiting his independence.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Social Theoryː Its Situation and Its Task (1987), p. 7

People, Dependency, Personality

“Admirers of the ‘purified’ Nietzsche have been hard put to unite his sanctioning of barbarity with an often subtle and rarefied cultural critique. But we can easily dispose of this dichotomy. In the first place, the union of ultra-refinement and brutality was by no means a personal quirk requiring psychological elucidation, but a universal, psychical-moral distinguishing mark of imperialist decadence.”

György Lukács (1885–1971) Marxist philosopher and literary critic

The Destruction of Reason, Chapter 3, “Nietzsche as Founder of Irrationalism in the Imperialist Period” § 3

Universe, Personality

“Things never got better, and Rumsfeld and Cheney never got any wiser. It became increasingly clear that those two men had eroded our country's claim to any moral high ground by flouting the Geneva Conventions. They forced policy decisions that allowed the hideous prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and encouraged the mistreatment of Muslim prisoners at our facility in Guantánamo in Cuba. I wasn't shy about hammering Rumsfeld.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 351
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Men, Decision, Country

“The human voice may be denominated the music of the mind; language, a figurative mode of expressing our ideas and sentiments. The effects of flowing from this beneficent endowment are overwhelming in contemplation and almost infinite in extent. It is principally instrumental to all the moral and physical improvements of man, and enables him to pour forth his otherwise invisible, inaudible, unfathomable thoughts, to his fellow-man and to his God.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Philosophical Magazine and Journal Of Science (July-December 1836), p. 346

God, Music, Idea

“I am an anarchist, a political and social Huguenot; I deny everything and affirm naught but myself: because the sole truth of which I have material and moral proof and tangible, comprehensible and intelligible evidence, the only real, startling, non-arbitrary truth not susceptible to interpretation, is myself. I am. There I have a positive fact. Everything else is abstraction and, in mathematics, would be designated as "x", and unknown quantity; and I need not trouble myself with it.”

Anselme Bellegarrigue book Anarchist Manifesto

Anarchist Manifesto (1850)

Truth, Intelligence, Mathematics

“The case for trade is not just monetary, but moral. Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Distinctly American Internationalism (November 1999)

Democracy, Freedom

“Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.”

Iris Murdoch book The Book and the Brotherhood

The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) p. 248.

Passion, Indifference

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.

The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race'. The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...

In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.

We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.

Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.

Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 36-37.
1970s

Pain, People, World, Education

“[Religion] is predominantly evil and entirely deceitful, has only negative correlations statistically, and is frequently maliciously abusive physically mentally and emotionally. It has historically always obstructed education and retarded or impeded progress in whatever application it has ever touched. All the worst atrocities in history were done in the name of religion and our greatest advances were made in opposition to it. I’m an antitheist because religion is factually historically ethically and morally wrong.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Education, Religion, History, Evil