A Quote by Philip Pullman
There is another consequence of any belief in a single god, and that is that it is a very good excuse for people to behave very badly.
Related Quotes
Religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the mind; and the mind then is never free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief; because your belief projects what you think God ought to be, what you think ought to be true. If you believe God is love, God is good, God is this or that, your very belief prevents you from understanding what is God, what is true.
According to my religious belief, I'm sorry if you feel like I'm pushing this on you - my religious belief is that you behave the way God wants us to behave. And that's simply love God and love one another. If we did that, there would be no need for any of the other commandments. It would be great. But in the same vein, we would have obtained paradise by that point. And it's tougher to get to paradise by that point.
I always go back to how people behave. If you watch how people actually behave in a situation, it's very simple and honest and contained. You don't need to use as much expression, as much feeling. Some characters will boil over, and that's another thing, but a lot of times I think you can just do very, very little.
Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen.
As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.
All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.
But they that hold God to be [an incorporeal substance]do absolutely make God to be nothing at all. But how? Were they atheists? No. For though by ignorance of the consequence they said that which was equivalent to atheism, yet in their hearts they thought God a substanceSo that this atheism by consequence is a very easy thing to be fallen into, even by the most godly men of the church.
He that does good to another does good also to himself, not only in the consequence but in the very act. For the consciousness of well-doing is in itself ample reward.
Any time there is a lot of money or ego involved, people tend to behave badly.
I have a very genuine care for individuals; I have a very genuine sense of the power of individuals to make a difference, a very genuine belief that people matter, a very genuine belief of wanting the very best for individuals.
What I noticed at Grace-Calvary is the same thing I notice whenever people aim to solve their conflicts with one another by turning to the bible: defending the dried ink marks on the page becomes more vital than defending their neighbor. As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God. In the words of Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas, 'People of the Book risk putting the book above people.
I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence.
Concepts of integrity and heroism and honor are still important to the world today. Some people behave well, and some people behave badly.
My administration is going to stop the tens of thousands of people coming in from Syria. We have no idea who they are, where they come from. There's no documentation. There's no paperwork. It's going to end badly folks. It's going to end very, very badly.
What the left says sounds very good but, in practice, it works out very badly.
The most important belief we possess is a true knowledge of who God is.
The second most important belief is who we are as children of God, because we cannot consistently behave in a way that is inconsistent with how we perceive ourselves.
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