David Bentley Quotes
Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.
Quotes to Explore
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Gossip is when you hear something you like about someone you don't.
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I always start the day by washing my face and moisturizing.
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If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false.
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On banks, I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer. There is much public anger about banks and it is well deserved.
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I don't think I've ever met any single person who has been vulgar. But you know, you learn along the way that some people are going to be very generous, and other people... It's just not innate within them. Sometimes I think you just have to decide if you're going to stand up and get on with it or if you're going to be crushed and threatened.
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Romy and I, we're learning how to share the xx with people who aren't in the xx.
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I have had the good fortune to be able to climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. I have enjoyed the freedom I had gained from building a successful business from scratch, making some money, and creating the lifestyle I wanted.
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I force myself to outline, but not too closely, so I guess I plot by the seat of my pants? My natural instinct is to dive right in, but I know I'll get stuck. I like to stick with the architect vs. gardener metaphor. I guess I'm a gardener who plants tomatoes. I have the sticks in the ground and let the vines grow along those parameters.
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By the end of the 1950s, American cars were so reliable that their reliability went without saying even in car ads. Thousands of them bear testimony to this today, still running on the roads of Cuba though fueled with nationalized Venezuelan gasoline and maintained with spit and haywire.
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This is why fiction is an art, and life is not - how much more affecting is the lie than the truth.
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I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking.
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It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
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If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it.
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… the ego's need to be periodically in conflict with something or someone in order to strengthen its sense of separation between me and the other, without which it cannot survive.
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It's one thing to talk about the redistribution of wealth. It's quite another thing to talk about the redistribution of power. That's more what interests me.
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I would love to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche on a train or boat and to talk with him all night. Incidentally, I don’t consider his philosophy long-lived. It is not so much persuasive as full of bravura.
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I can't imagine anything more important than air, water, soil, energy and biodiversity. These are the things that keep us alive.
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The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.
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I was a political science major. I was always interested in social impact.
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Name a country, and I have probably been there.
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A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature - a good bit, of course, but a bit only - in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.
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Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.
