The subject of power is not a simple matter of which majority sits on which minority at any given time. Looking around the world today and back through history, we see the horrors to which interreligious conflicts can lead — Muslims versus Hindus, Orthodox Eastern Serbs and Croatian Roman Catholics against Bosnian Muslims, Catholics versus Protestants in much of Europe after the sixteenth century, not to omit our own lesser, but horrible, history of persecutions in colonial America and the martyrdom of Joseph Smith as well as a number of his Mormon followers. We see, too, the fragility of the lessons these oceans of blood should have taught. The powerless call out for tolerance. Achieving power, they may soon forget. The descendants of Rome’s Christian martyrs remember too well the role of the torturers rather than the agonies of their own ancestors.
Melvin Frank (1913-1988) American screenwriter, director
Faith and Freedom: Religious Liberty in America (1994)
Quotations by:
Frank, Melvin
HAWKINS: I’ve got it! I’ve got it! The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true! Right?
GRISELDA: Right. But there’s been a change: they broke the chalice from the palace!
HAWKINS: They broke the chalice from the palace?
GRISELDA: And replaced it with a flagon.
HAWKINS: A flagon…?
GRISELDA: With the figure of a dragon.
HAWKINS: Flagon with a dragon.
GRISELDA: Right.
HAWKINS: But did you put the pellet with the poison in the vessel with the pestle?
GRISELDA: No! The pellet with the poison’s in the flagon with the dragon! The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true!
HAWKINS: The pellet with the poison’s in the flagon with the dragon; the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true.
GRISELDA: Just remember that.Melvin Frank (1913-1988) American screenwriter, director
The Court Jester (1956)
(with Norman Panama)