WIST Quotations

Gaiman, Neil -- American Gods, Part 3, ch. 18 (2001)

Dave — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 22:32:30 +0000

If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as a metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you — even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers and triumphs over all opposition.
Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
American Gods, Part 3, ch. 18 (2001)
(Source)

Frye, Northrop -- The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, Introduction (1982)

Dave — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 17:54:48 +0000

Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns.

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist
The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, Introduction (1982)
(Source)

Arendt, Hannah -- Essay (1969-02-27), “Reflections on Violence,” The New York Review of Books

Dave — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 19:23:11 +0000

Man’s urge for change and his need for stability have always balanced and checked each other, and our current vocabulary, which distinguishes between two factions, the progressives and the conservatives, indicates a state of affairs in which this balance has been thrown out of order. No civilization — the man-made artifact to house successive generations — would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Essay (1969-02-27), “Reflections on Violence,” The New York Review of Books
(Source)

Revised and collected in Crises of the Republic, "On Violence" (1972).