Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Megan Phelps-Roper - Page 2

When I got on Twitter, that was the first time I was able to have lasting relationships with outsiders. And even though they were limited to those 140 characters, it was the duration of the friendships and the rapport we were able to develop.

For my grandfather, there was no distinction. There was no tension between his support for civil rights for black people and his animus toward gay people because both of those positions were scripturally derived.

I don't believe any more that God hates almost all of mankind.

Empathy is not a betrayal of one's cause.

I'm constantly meeting people that I hurt, you know? This is not - when I go and talk about these things, this is not a theoretical - it's not a theoretical apology. It's something that I live every day.

The pickets were just a fact of life. And the fact that people hated us from the time I was tiny, the fact that we were hated, I was taught, was a cause for great rejoicing.

I feel like I was transformed by the kindness of people who had every reason to show me cruelty and the transformative power of their decision to treat me like a human being, that was so huge, that anytime somebody wants me to talk about that I feel like I absolutely want to do that.

The very first soldier's funeral protest that I went to was in Omaha, Neb.

I don't think that, if you do everything else in your life right and you happen to be gay, you're automatically going to hell.

It really bugs me that Twitter gets such a bad rep.

Generally, people don't change their minds about fundamentally deeply held beliefs; it doesn't happen in an instant - it's a process.

There's a learned helplessness for a lot of people who are leaving Westboro because you're not allowed to have any kind of independence when you are there so a lot of people don't have practical life skills.

You know, I had grown up standing on public sidewalks, saying things that people, you know, were very provoked by and were upset by. And - but standing outside that first soldier's funeral, it was eerily quiet.

The things I believe in now are grace and the power of human connection to change hearts and minds and the importance of civil dialogue.

I got on Twitter in 2009.

Loving someone whose ideas we find detestable can seem impossible, and empathizing with them isn't much easier - but it's so important to remember that listening is not agreeing.

We were raised to believe that our way of seeing the world was the only way.

In 2014, as a Christmas gift, I wrote an essay for my husband, about our story. Writing that showed me there was value in interrogating my experiences while they were fresh - especially because I was terrified of forgetting.

Twitter was an alternative community for me. A different kind of community. I knew I was making people angry. But it didn't matter, they weren't my community. But the longer I was on Twitter and the more I came to know these people, to like and respect them, the more I could see the empathy and grief and sorrow they were expressing.

We read the whole Bible, cover to cover, over and over again... It wasn't that we read selective parts of the Bible. It was that we interpreted it in this very selective way.

Since leaving the church, I've been working with law enforcement involved in counterterrorism and deradicalization. I hoped that illuminating Westboro's ideology - and especially the unraveling of that ideology - would be useful to the people doing that work.

We held signs that said 'Thank God For Dead Soldiers,' 'Thank God For IEDs.'

My church's antics were such that we were constantly at odds with the world. That reinforced our 'otherness' on a daily basis.

My family, they cannot have anything to do with us. They believe that, you know, their duty is to deliver me to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

I will say, this is something, this praying for people to die thing, that's something that I came to believe was unscriptural. And for years, I made these arguments to my family, in writing, privately in letters that didn't get responses and in interviews. And for a while, they just doubled down. Eventually, they came to stop doing it.

We were supposed to be able to use the Bible's words to explain what we were doing, and if we couldn't do that, then we shouldn't be doing it.

When people are in the thrall of poisonous ideology, it's really not all about deliberate ill will, or inherent hatred, or a lack of intelligence. It's about the unbelievable destructiveness and staying power of bad ideas and about finding ways to equip people with the tools they need to fight them.

Take heart, and be patient; change takes time but it is possible, and it's way more likely if we can reach out and disagree without demonizing.

We thought it was our duty to go and warn people of the consequences of their sins, and I understood that to be the definition of loving our neighbour.

As happy as we were in our backyard jumping on trampolines, it was the same general feeling, often euphoria, on the picket line, because we felt like the way our lives were falling on to us contorted with the people of God and the scriptures. It all felt very normal.

As a member of Westboro Baptist Church, I became a fixture on picket lines across the country.

I don't believe in God anymore.

I don't believe any more that WBC has a monopoly on truth.

I don't like to say I'm not a believer because I still feel like a believer in a lot of things, primarily hope and grace and the power of human connection.

Several people I had conversations with were hugely influential. People who found internal inconsistency in Westboro's ideology. It was the first thing that allowed me to recognize that Westboro was wrong.

I went to my mother right before I was set to go protest my first soldier's funeral and asked my mother: 'I need to understand why we're doing this.'

I believe in so much - I believe in people. I believe in hope.

I try to focus on using my energy to change things, but there are times when I feel so bad.

When we lose hope that there is a possibility of reaching the other side - I don't even like to say the 'other side' because there are so many sides, and breaking it down into us/them is oversimplifying - it allows us to treat people in a way that's incredibly destructive.