WIST Quotations

Ingersoll, Robert Green -- Lecture (1872-01-29), “The Gods,” Fairbury Hall, Fairbury, Illinois

Dave — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 20:27:10 +0000

Nothing is so pleasing to these gods as the butchery of unbelievers. Nothing so enrages them, even now, as to have some one deny their existence.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1872-01-29), “The Gods,” Fairbury Hall, Fairbury, Illinois
(Source)

First given on the 135th birthday of Thomas Paine. Collected in The Gods and Other Lectures (1876).

Adams, John Quincy -- Speech, Plymouth (22 Dec 1802)

Dave — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 05:31:39 +0000

Religious discord has lost her sting; the cumbrous weapons of theological warfare are antiquated: the field of politics supplies the alchymists of our times with materials of more fatal explosion, and the butchers of mankind no longer travel to another world for instruments of cruelty and destruction. Our age is too enlightened to contend upon topics, which concern only the interests of eternity; and men who hold in proper contempt all controversies about trifles, except such as inflame their own passions, have made it a common-place censure against your ancestors, that their zeal was enkindled by subjects of trivial importance; and that however aggrieved by the intolerance of others, they were alike intolerant themselves. Against these objections, your candid judgment will not require an unqualified justification; but your respect and gratitude for the founders of the State may boldly claim an ample apology. The original grounds of their separation from the church of England, were not objects of a magnitude to dissolve the bonds of communion; much less those of charity, between Christian brethren of the same essential principles.

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) US President (1825-29)
Speech, Plymouth (22 Dec 1802)

Ellul, Jacques -- The Presence of the Kingdom [Présence au monde moderne] (1948) [tr. Wyon (1951)]

Dave — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 23:48:50 +0000

Every time the Church has gotten into the political game, no matter what the manner of her entry, no matter what her opinion or posing choices in a political situation with regard to an institution, she has been drawn every time into a betrayal, either of revealed truth or of the incarnate love. She has become involved every time in apostasy. … Politics is the Church’s worst problem. It is her constant temptation, the occasion of her greatest disasters, the trap continually set for her by the Prince of this world.

Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) French philosopher, law professor, sociologist, theologian
The Presence of the Kingdom [Présence au monde moderne] (1948) [tr. Wyon (1951)]

Lewis, C.S. -- Letter to Father Peter Milward (6 May 1963)

Dave — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 17:41:15 +0000

You ask me in effect why I am not a Roman Catholic. If it comes to that, why am I not — and why are you not — a Presbyterian, a Quaker, a Mohammedan, a Hindu, or a Confucianist? After how prolonged and sympathetic study and on what grounds have we rejected these religions? I think those who press a man to desert the religion in which he has been bred and in which he believes he has found the means of Grace ought to produce positive reasons for the change — not demand from him reasons against all other religions. It would have to be all, wouldn’t it?

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letter to Father Peter Milward (6 May 1963)

Lowell, James Russell -- Among My Books (1870)

Dave — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 15:24:16 +0000

Toward no crime have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American diplomat, essayist, poet
Among My Books (1870)

Orwell, George -- Essay (1946-01), “The Prevention of Literature,” Polemic Magazine

Dave — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:56:17 +0000

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent. Each of them tacitly claims that “the truth” has already been revealed, and that the heretic, if he is not simply a fool, is secretly aware of “the truth” and merely resists it out of selfish motives.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1946-01), “The Prevention of Literature,” Polemic Magazine
(Source)