humanism

"Integral Humanism is the name we have given to the sum total of various features of Bharatiya Sanskriti (...)"

"The official doctrine of the BJS/BJP is called Integral Humanism.... it is the alpha and omega of ideological training sessions of RSS and BJP workers."

"The Bharatiya Janata Party's social agenda flows from its ideology of Integral Humanism (...)"

"I believe in Integral Humanism which is the basic philosophy of Bharatiya Janata Party."

"In their official training programme, all activists of the RSS, BJP and related organizations, i.e. millions of people, today, are taught Deendayal Upadhyaya's philosophy of "Integral Humanism", ... now the official party ideology of the BJP."

"Modi has an intellectual anchor in his quest. Deendayal Upadhyaya’s philosophy of Integral Humanism could play an important role in creating a framework for a well-functioning market economy which eschews cronyism and other types of wrongdoing while creating wealth. Integral Humanism has a moral dimension which is important in a country reeling from amoral, if not immoral, capitalists."

"(...) Integral Humanism is most akin to the Christian-Democratic movement in Europe."

"Against these two arms of atheism, the core counter-insight from the religiously committed side was that “a humanism which denies man’s religious dimension, is not an integral humanism”. Materialism amputates the natural religious dimension from man, and this has to be restored... So, in name, “integral humanism” had a touch of genius. It sounds so innocent and positive, something that nobody can object to. That is why, in spite of being the official ideology of RSS and BJP, in which every member is trained, it is never mentioned in textbooks by “experts” on Hindutva... Out of an unscholarly political activism, these “experts” prefer to push more negatively-sounding terms, of which “Hindu nationalist” is still the kindest. It is unthinkable to read a textbook on the Labour Party without coming across the word “socialism”, yet so noxious is the intellectual climate in both India and India-watching, that it is entirely the done thing to write expert introductions on the RSS-BJP without mentioning its actual ideology. ... Alright, his term “Integral Humanism” was bright, and the best possible secular-sounding approximation to a perfect translation of the Hindu term Dharma... However, rather than being proud of his Hinduism as the source of integral-humanist values, Upadhyaya, like most Sanghi ideologues ever since, was in the business of downplaying and hiding this Hinduism behind secular terms. His “integral humanism” ended up as the equivalent of the secularists’ “idea of India”. He pioneered what was to become “BJP secularism”."

"Integral Humanism shall be the basic philosophy of the Party."

"If you would want to honestly criticize the BJP through a book, it would be Upadhyaya’s ‘Integral Humanism’, but even the sheer mention of that book is absent from the immense majority of ‘expert’ publications about the BJP..."

"That which is in the microcosm, that is also in the macrocosm."

"You're everybody's best friend. You always make me laugh."

"It’s like if, like there was a big germ going around, and it was creating every one to be mad and angry and making them to do bad stuff."

"Somebody brought teeth to the relationship. … Forty years ago, my life started again."

"We decided to do the small things that we could, to the make the world a better place, so we created the Joygerm club, and the kindness campaigns."

"Matt signed up to be an organ donor at the age of 16. That decision, and Ryan's heroism, helped save 60 other people who received donations from Matt."

"I woke up this morning and told Matt that Mom & Dad is coming today."

"We like to make sure she is treated fairly by everybody, because she needs to — and she deserves it."

"Anyone can do it — BE RADIANT! Make the decision. I want to be an agent of change to a loving world — so I will be radiant."

"If everyone could look past the physical appearance … this world would be a better place."

"You know, t's always the same. I've clowned in 81 countries. People hunger for love, and clowning is a trick to get love close. As a clown I can do things that people are too frightened of Love to allow you to do."

"We don't see it as we are going to help her, we see it as she's going to help us with our lives."

"That what its about — It's about Life — L - I - F - E — LIFE!"

"I want a family. Even if I had to live in a box."

"Daddy, there's a fire on one of the houses."

"It must be recognized that man in his limited and relative earthly life is capable of bringing about the beautiful and the valuable only when he believes in another life, unlimited, absolute, eternal. That is a law of his being. A contact with this mortal life exclusive of any other ends in the wearing-away of effective energy and a self-satisfaction that makes one useless and superficial. Only the spiritual man, striking his roots deep in infinite and eternal life, can be a true creator. But Humanism denied the spiritual man, handed over the eternal to the temporal, and took its stand by the natural man within the limited confines of the earth."

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."

"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? For me it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

"It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search."

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking."

"No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone."

"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

"When you make the finding yourself--even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light--you never forget it."

"The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only to cease taking himself easily; let him follow his conscience, which calls to him: “Be your self! All you are now doing, thinking, desiring, is not you yourself.”"

"In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad conscience—why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conventionality and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that constrains the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. With the great majority it is indolence, inertia. ... Men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them. Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashions and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone’s secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle."

"There exists no more repulsive and desolate creature in the world than the man who has evaded his genius and who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and all about him. ... He is wholly exterior, without kernel, a tattered, painted bag of clothes."

"Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties.”"

"Freethought was a basically anti-christian, anti-clerical movement, whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide for himself on religious matters. A number of contributors to Liberty were prominent figures in both freethought and anarchism."

"How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables."

"About God and Religion: Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?Faith: not wanting to know what is true. The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight."

"Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works."

"Shake off all the fears and servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

"Habe Mut dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung."

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. There is not a truth existing which I fear ... or would wish unknown to the whole world."

"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."

"Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen."

"Christianity is not my religion and the Bible is not my book. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of doctrine and dogma."

"Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man--this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in and inferior position. ... Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal."

"Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent--slimy, sneaking and abominable."

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."