A Quote by Paul Feyerabend

All religions are good 'in principle' - but unfortunately this abstract Good has only rarely prevented their practitioners from behaving like bastards.

Paul Feyerabend

Quote Topics

Abstract All Religions Bastards Behaving Good Like Only Principle Rarely Religions Unfortunately

Quote Author

Paul Feyerabend
Austrian - Philosopher
January 13, 1924 - February 11, 1994

The way of presentation is different according to each religion. In theistic religions like Buddhism, Buddhist values are incorporated. In nontheistic religions, like some types of ancient Indian thought, the law of karma applies. If you do something good, you get a good result. Now, what we need is a way to educate nonbelievers. These nonbelievers may be critical of all religions, but they should be decent at heart.

Dalai Lama

Like all religions, love has more believers than practitioners.

Natalie Clifford Barney

Abstract understanding doesn't mean arbitrary sloshing and messing. Abstract art is controlled visual magic based on laws and methodology. Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery rather that obvious description. Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feelings before your understanding. Abstraction within realism adds zest and excitement to otherwise dull subject matter. Abstract understanding takes time and patience.

Robert Genn

...This is the only way. I will not allow humans or fairies to die when I might have prevented it.” Butler would not give up. “Listen to yourself. You sound like a... like a good guy! There’s nothing in this for you.

Eoin Colfer

If you take a look at history, you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards, in order to express this idea.

Salman Rushdie

I like old men. They can be wonderful bastards because they have nothing to lose. The only people who can be themselves are babies and old bastards.

John Updike

Yes, a general principle that comes out of research behind Good to Eat is that there are no world religions that have acted to decrease the potential for the nutritional well-being of their followers.

Marvin Harris

As is the case with all good things in life - love, good manners, language, cooking - personal creativity is required only rarely.

Leon Krier

Well, good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract. So automatically you're getting closer to potentially divine sources of interest because it is abstract. It's one of the only ways that a film actor can express himself in the abstract and have audiences still go along for the ride. They don't contend it. They accept it, that they're going to go places that are a bit more of the imagination, a bit more out there, and that's more and more where I like to dance.

Nicolas Cage

Jesus Christ represented God as the principle of all good, the source of all happiness, the wise and benevolent Creator and Preserver of all living things. But the interpreters of his doctrines have confounded the good and the evil principle.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.

Horace Walpole

I was a ballerina for a good 12 years. When I was 15 I had to stop. It wasn't a choice, it was an injury that prevented me from going forward in ballet unfortunately. Well, fortunately because I wouldn't be doing what I am doing now if that had not happened.

Kiesza

There is only one principle, and this is Good. There is no principle of evil. If there were a principle of evil, evil would be positive and not negative, and therefore could never be overcome, because it would be eternal and unchanging.

Henry Thomas Hamblin

I affirm that gain is precisely that which comes oftener to the bad man than to the good; for illegitimate gains never come to the good at all, because they reject them. And lawful gains rarely come to the good, because, since much anxious care is needful thereto, and the anxious care of the good man is directed to weightier matters, rarely does the good man give sufficient attention thereto. Wherefore it is clear that in every way the advent of these riches is iniquitous.

Dante Alighieri

It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words. You bastards, she thought. You lovely bastards. Don’t make me happy. Please, don’t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this.