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2009 December 25
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"When we let freedom ring,
when we let it ring
from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city,
we will be able to speed up that day
when all of God's children,
black men and white men,
Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands and
sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
'Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'" |
"Truth never tranquilizes.
The defining property of truth is its ability to disturb.
Jesus only told half the story.
The truth 'will' set you free.
But, first it's going to piss you off." |
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2009 December 24
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"Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our god alone. I enquire after no man's and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friend's or our foe's, are exactly the right." |
"The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors." |
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2009 December 23
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"There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution." |
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul." |
"Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices – taking advantage of our freedom of speech – who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do." |
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2009 December 22
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"No loss by flood and lightning,
no destruction of cities and temples
by hostile forces of nature,
has deprived man
of so many noble lives and impulses
as those which his intolerance
has destroyed." |
"Government…may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another… The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality…" |
"Freedom arises from a multiplicity of sects, which pervades America,
and is the best and only security for religious liberty in America." |
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2009 December 21
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"Words that enlighten are more precious than jewels." |
"The relative openness or closedness of a mind
cuts across specific content; that is,
it is not restricted to any one particular
ideology, or religion, or philosophy, or
scientific viewpoint." |
"If we value the pursuit of knowledge,
we must be free to follow it
wherever the search may lead us." |
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