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2702530
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Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
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prophets
religion
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Umberto Eco |
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1bdc5e5
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I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long. If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be ? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.
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antisemitism
atheism
christianity
christians
einstein
freud
humans
islam
jesus
jews
marx
messiah
moses
muhammad
muslims
myth
prophets
religion
theism
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Christopher Hitchens |
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762099a
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Agnes was the worst prophet that's ever existed. Because she was always right. That's why the book never sold.
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prophets
unheeded-predictions
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Neil Gaiman |
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79306f0
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In that face, deformed by hatred of philosophy, I saw for the first time the portrait of the Antichrist, who does not come from the tribe of Judas, as his heralds have it, or from a far country. The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge did a diabolical thing because he loved his truth so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood.
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fanaticism
prophets
religion
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Umberto Eco |
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d934fb0
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A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer.
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prophets
religion
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Stephen Crane |
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f1fcccf
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We can always be sure of one thing--that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. This is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments.
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bible
brave-new-world
history
martyrs
old-testament
prophets
religion
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Christopher Hitchens |
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c8aa687
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Let any one speak long enough, he will get believers.
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prophets
quackery
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Robert Louis Stevenson |
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86e5606
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Every minister worthy of the name has to walk the line between prophetic vision and spiritual sustenance, between telling people the comforting things they want to hear and challenging them with the difficult things they need to hear. In Oxford, Daddy began to feel as though all the members wanted him to do was to marry them and bury them and stay away from their souls.
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challenging
comfort
marrying
ministers
prophets
saving-souls
sustenance
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Timothy B. Tyson |
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adbb30f
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Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law. Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ, it's here. And the hour's late. And the war's begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colors... All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need intact and safe. We're not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good... Right now we have a horrible job; we're waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end. It's not pleasant, but then we're not in control, we're the odd minority crying in the wilderness. When the war's over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world.
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knowledge
literature
memory
prophets
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Ray Bradbury |
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0169f27
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And never mind that the lessons he meant to be helpful, his students always make people miserable with, and flunk anybody that disagrees with them!
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prophets
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John Barth |
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e4ad8e8
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There's a reason prophets perform miracles: language lacks the power to describe faith. And you have to land on faith before you can even begin to hike around to its flip side, betrayal.
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faith
prophets
relationships
trust
trustworthiness
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Mohsin Hamid |