33 quotes found
"It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory - that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state - that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders - that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique - that fascism is not the product of the political "right," but of the "left" - that the basic issue is not "rich versus poor," but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government - which means: capitalism versus socialism."
"A: "Your objection to the self-evident has no validity. There is no such thing as disagreement. People agree about everything." B: "That’s absurd; people disagree constantly, and about all kinds of things." A: "How can they? There’s nothing to disagree about; no subject matter. After all, nothing exists." B: "Nonsense. All kinds of things exist, you know that as well as I do." A: "That’s one. You must accept the existence axiom, even to utter the term “disagreement.” But to continue, I still maintain that disagreement is unreal. How can people disagree when they are unconscious beings who are unable to hold any ideas at all?" B: "Of course people hold ideas. They are conscious beings. You know that." A: "There’s another axiom, but even so, why is disagreement about axioms a problem? Why should it suggest that one or more of the parties is mistaken? Perhaps all of the people who disagree about the very same point are equally, objectively right." B: "That’s impossible. If two ideas contradict each other, they can’t both be right. Contradictions can’t exist in reality. After all, A is A." Existence, consciousness, identity are presupposed by every statement and by every concept, including that of "disagreement." … In the act of voicing his objection, therefore, the objector has conceded the case. In any act of challenging or denying the three axioms, a man reaffirms them, no matter what the particular content of this challenge. The axioms are invulnerable. The opponents of these axioms pose as defenders of truth, but it is only a pose. Their attack on the self-evident amounts to the charge. "Your belief in an idea doesn't necessarily make it true; you must prove it, because facts are what they are independent of your beliefs." Every element of this charge relies on the very axioms that these people are questioning and supposedly setting aside."
"Responsible parenthood involves decades devoted to the child’s proper nurture. To sentence a woman to bear a child against her will is an unspeakable violation of her rights: her right to liberty (to the functions of her body), her right to the pursuit of happiness, and, sometimes, her right to life itself, even as a serf. Such a sentence represents the sacrifice of the actual to the potential, of a real human being to a piece of protoplasm, which has no life in the human sense of the term. It is sheer perversion of language for people who demand this sacrifice to call themselves ‘right-to-lifers.’ “"
"To those who oppose war, I ask: If not now, when? How many more corpses are necessary before this country should take action?"
"Now, the United States’ response, the western response to this is a continuation of the appeasement that was started back in the ’50s with Eisenhower when Iran seized western oil companies. The Americans, the British, and the Israelis, as I remember, launched an attack to try to reclaim it and — or at least the British and the Israelis did and Eisenhower vetoed it."
"Now if you ask me, in conclusion, “Well, what, then should properly be done?” Obviously war, but I mean in regard to this issue I would say: Any way possible permission should be refused and if they go ahead and build it, the government should bomb it out of existence, evacuating it first, with no compensation to any of the property owners involved in this monstrosity."
"Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality. … Don’t put limitations on yourself. Other people will do that for you. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t bet against yourself. And take risk. NASA has this phrase that they like, "Failure is not an option." But failure has to be an option. In art and exploration, failure has to be an option. Because it is a leap of faith. And no important endeavour that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. … In whatever you are doing, failure is an option. But fear is not."
"This may surprise you, because it surprised me when I found out, but the single biggest thing that an individual can do to combat climate change is to stop eating animals. Because of the huge, huge carbon footprint of animal agriculture. I was shocked to find out that animal agriculture directly or indirectly accounts for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, compared to all transportation – every ship, car, truck, plane on the planet only accounts for 13%. Less than animal agriculture. So most people think that buying a Prius is the answer, and it’s certainly not wrong, but it’s not the biggest agent of climate change."
"[About veganism] You're going to be healthier, you're going to live longer, you're going to look better. You're going to have fewer zits. You're going to be slimmer. You're going to radiate health. You're going to have a better sex drive. That's what shifting away from meat and dairy does. My whole family did this, and we're doing spectacularly well from a health standpoint. I have not had a single sniffle, not a flu, not a cold, nothing that's taken me offline as much as an hour in three and a half years."
"I look back on some films that I’ve made, and I don’t know if I would want to make that film now. I don’t know if I would want to fetishize the gun, like I did on a couple of Terminator movies 30+ years ago, in our current world. What’s happening with guns in our society turns my stomach."
"In short, James Cameron's sequels work because he comes up with new ways for his characters to evolve and progress, rather than merely react to a series of events set before them. The Ripley we see at the start of Aliens is different from the one who goes back into cryosleep at its end. Aliens and T2 may have dazzling action sequences, but it's these story and character progressions that make them so dramatically satisfying."
"Aliens brings Ripley's story of alien impregnations, molecular acid, and death to an upbeat close by taking away the fear and isolation that plagued her since the end of Alien. As the lid closes on Ripley's cryo-tube, we realise that she's found the companionship and peace she deserves. Similarly, Terminator 2 sees the nightmare future of Judgment Day averted. The T-800 may have sacrificed himself to protect the human race, but the film's events have allowed Sarah to reconnect with her son and her own compassion. With stories as complete as these, it's hardly surprising that the filmmakers charged with making Terminator 3 and Alien 3 have struggled to find new directions in which to take them. In both cases, those second sequels were the opposite of Aliens and T2: they simply felt like "more of the same." In Alien 3, poor Ripley finds herself in a worse situation than she was at the start of Aliens - her surrogate family is dead, she's stuck in an all-male prison with an alien running around, and there's something horrible stirring in her viscera. Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines was, if anything, even more gloomy. Sarah Connor died between sequels; John Connor's a lonely drifter, and Judgment Day hasn't been cancelled - merely postponed. The sense of hope - not to mention Cameron's motto that "there's no fate but what we make for ourselves" - is replaced by the suggestion that annihilation by sentient machines is inescapable. Beyond Ripley and Sarah's stories in Aliens and T2, filmmakers could find only despair and nihilism."
"It turns out that Cameron, who is known as an action filmmaker, he admits, believes that his films have often been too violent, and the heavy amounts of gun violence that play into films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and True Lies he believes have no place in moral moviemaking in the current state of the world."
""....I grew up in a world where feminism was all around me like a beacon of hope cutting through the opposing ideas I was being taught at home...."
"“...celebrate the women who have defied socialcensure and the state to remove the hijab...""
""...No Hijab Day is a day to support brave women across the globe who want to be free from the hijab. Women who want to decide for themselves what to wear or what not to wear on their heads. Women who fight against either misogynist governments that will imprison them for removing their hijab or against abusive families and communities that will ostracize, abuse and even kill them."
"...It will be difficult for Western women who wore hijab on Hijab Day, at the Women’s March,...not feel shame....how you’ve betrayed women, We all deserve freedom...not just you....STOP supporting our subjugation #FreeFromHijab"
"....Maybe they should read the whole Quran as well. It would be impossible for anyone with the slightest bit of empathy to read the Quran and—at the end of it—say that: “Islam is a religion of peace.” But people are generally good, and, if Muslims sat down with the Quran, translated it into their own language and read it, they would be horrified. They would not want to identify with whatever religion teaches these kinds of atrocious things. But most of them don’t even know what that book says. ..."
""...“What I was not prepared for was the tsunami of just hate and pushback and disdain that would come from people I thought were my people: people that believed in enlightenment values, Western values, and liberal values...”"
"....Many apologists for Islam have claimed “Muslims are the true feminists” or “Islam is a religion of peace,” and it is certainly possible to have Muslims who are feminists, and the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people. Many verses in the Quran and Hadith support women and peace. But Yasmine’s story reveals that anyone pushing those narratives without acknowledging that much of Islamic doctrine does the opposite is either ignorant or dishonest...."
"In Unveiled, Yasmine Mohammed... putting the lie to the dangerous notion that criticizing the doctrine of Islam is a form of bigotry."
"The United Church is the only denomination in the world that could declare the Bible is not the authoritative word of God for all time. And that needs to be said by a major recognized denomination in order to undermine every single statement that is made by any religious extremist group — that their document, whether it’s the Bible, the Qur’an or the Bhagavad Gita, is not a divinely authored piece from some supernatural source."
"What people kept saying is how can a minister who says she doesn’t believe in God be a minister in the Christian church?"
"We were looking for someone deemed to be progressive-thinking. [West Hill as a congregation that wanted to] explore new roads in its spiritual journey."
"Anecdotally my sense is there are a lot of ministers who maybe wouldn’t say it as forcefully as Gretta would, but at the end of the day they don’t really believe in anything resembling traditional Christianity."
"You are stealing the tradition of a noble religion and using it when you are preaching the exact opposite of what they believe"
"A minister who is not suitable, cannot be effective. To assess suitability, the review committee may ask the minister to answer the ordination questions again, starting with: Do you believe in God?"
"Gretta has called herself 'an atheist minister'. While that language is startling to some, the Christian academy knows exactly what she is saying. To refer to oneself as an 'atheist' does not mean that one is asserting that there is no God; it means that the 'theistic' definition of God is no longer operative or believable."
"Whether or not Gretta Vosper is a minister is a decision that is made by a regional body called a conference, and Gretta Vosper is not in London Conference, which is the conference I serve"
"[The Mythical Jesus viewpoint is] the theory that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed, that Christianity began with a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction..."
"[Per writings earlier than Mark] the object of Christian faith [Jesus] is never spoken of as a human man who had recently lived, taught, performed miracles, suffered and died at the hands of human authorities, or rose from a tomb outside Jerusalem. There is no sign in the epistles of Mary or Joseph, Judas or John the Baptist, no birth story, teaching or appointment of apostles by Jesus, no mention of holy places or sites of Jesus’ career, not even the hill of Calvary or the empty tomb. This silence is so pervasive and so perplexing that attempted explanations for it have proven inadequate."
"[The Epistle to the Hebrews chapter 8, verse 4] contains a grammatically ambiguous statement in the Greek: it says either that “If Jesus were on earth [meaning now], he would not be a priest” or “If Jesus had been on earth, he would not have been a priest.” [...] What my analysis does is show that, within the context of the passage and through deductive reasoning, the present sense, allotting the statement to the present time, cannot be supported; in fact, it can be shown that the author can only be applying it to the past."
"[In the Gospels] many elements of the Jesus story [depend] on passages and motifs from the Jewish scriptures. [...] John Shelby Spong (in his Liberating the Gospels) regards the Synoptic Gospels as midrashic fiction in virtually every detail, though he believes it was based on an historical man."