Michael Shermer Quotes
In the past 10,000 years, humans have devised roughly 100,000 religions based on roughly 2,500 gods. So the only difference between myself and the believers is that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We're only one God away from total agreement.
Quotes to Explore
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The tension between the essence of spiritual teachings and the harmful fundamentalism that often arises in the name of religion is an issue that has engaged my mind practically as far back as I can remember.
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It was once religion which threatened us with a last judgment at the end of days. It is now our tortured planet which predicts the arrival of such a day without any heavenly intervention.
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My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.
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Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace; it may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness.
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Then if your movie clicks with real audiences, you'll be sucked into some sort of Hollywood orbit. It's a devil of a place where the only religion that really counts is box office.
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A free trade agreement can be a win-win for E.U. and India.
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You're always going to have extremists in every religion.
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If you don't acknowledge differences, it's as bad as stereotyping or reducing someone.
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I hope we will not so characterize religious people as being so narrow and so biased towards people not of their own religion that they cannot even work with them in this common cause to which you say they are committed.
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Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don't need to carry it around with you after you've crossed the river.
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The basic assumption of the secular society is that modernity overcomes religion.
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Religious tolerance is something we should all practice; however, there have been more persecution and atrocities committed in the name of religion and religious freedom than anything else.
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To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.
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Do you believe in rock 'n roll? Can music save your mortal soul?
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The foolish idea that my music can actually make a difference in someone's life - that right there is proof that it's working. It makes me feel great, it really does.
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All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.
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I've come to realize that the difference in success or failure is not how you look, how you dress, or how you're educated. It's how you think !
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The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.
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All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.
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This forest was immense. It stretched away uninterruptedly to the north, till stopped by having got to the shores of the Baltic. We had it all to ourselves. Unnoticed, except by what Johann called finches, we passed along its vistas, and no human eye beheld the capes, the coronets and the cockades. In that past which seemed to me at my age remote, these things had all been new and spick and span, because of the glory which for a time was the portion of the family; and when, having risen and blazed, the glory at last faded out, it left a litter behind it, in every stage of decomposition, for the ultimate use, so it appeared, of one small foreign girl and one small indigenous dachshund.
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There are many men who would have done better than I did under the circumstances in which I found myself. If I had never held command, if I had fallen, there were 10,000 behind who would have followed the contest to the end and never surrendered the Union.
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Drinking rum before 10 am makes you a pirate, not an alcoholic.
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I learned early on – I can go to a shoot, and they will put anything they want to put on me, and I'll look like an idiot because I didn't say I don't like it. It's OK to have an opinion.
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In the past 10,000 years, humans have devised roughly 100,000 religions based on roughly 2,500 gods. So the only difference between myself and the believers is that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We're only one God away from total agreement.
