Reader > Reader's Quotes

“The root problem with Christianity is that their god is supposed to be all-powerful and benevolent. It sounds like an easy sell, but when life turns completely to shit, you have to come up with all kinds of whacked-out reasons for why kindly old Jehovah saw fit to run over little Timmy with a combine harvester and leave him in a state of vegetative, limbless agony for eighteen years.”
― Yahtzee Croshaw

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
― Albert Camus

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Live to the point of tears.”
― Albert Camus

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
― Albert Camus

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus

“While many nations have a terrible record in modern times of dealing out great suffering face-to-face with their victims, Americans have made it a point to keep at a distance while inflicting some of the greatest horrors of the age: atomic bombs on the people of Japan; carpet-bombing Korea back to the stone age; engulfing the Vietnamese in napalm and pesticides; providing three decades of Latin Americans with the tools and methods of torture, then turning their eyes away, closing their ears to the screams, and denying everything … and now, dropping 177 million pounds of bombs on the people of Iraq in the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world.”
― William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II

“Former Chinese Premier Chou En-lai once observed: “One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.”
― William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II

“So, Americans, then. Self-appointed vigilante defenders of the world, kind of like Superman, if Superman was retarded and only fought crime when he felt like it.”
― Yahtzee Croshaw

“The "trickle-down" theory: the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.”
― William Blum

“No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.”
― William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

“The United States is not concerned with this thing called ‘democracy’, no matter how many times every American president uses the word each time he opens his mouth. As noted in the Introduction, since 1945 the US has attempted to overthrow more than fifty governments, most of which were democratically elected, and grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least thirty countries.”
― William Blum, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else

“When will the dropping of bombs on innocent civilians by the United States, and invading and occupying their country, without their country attacking or threatening the US, become completely discredited?”
― William Blum, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else

“The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world, for which end it is prepared to use any means necessary. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington’s policies fades away. To express this striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since the end of World War II the United States has:
1) Endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected;
2) Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries;
3) Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders;
4) Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries;
5) Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.”
― William Blum, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy – The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else

“The United States is an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become a target are: (a) it poses an obstacle – could be anything – to a particular desire of the American Empire; (b) it is virtually defenseless against aerial attack; (c) it does not possess nuclear weapons.”
― William Blum, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses

“Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

“Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“The devil was accused for compassion.”
― Syed Buali Gillani

“Lucifer spoke thus. Pride took him from heaven, though he sat at God's right hand.' Her voice grew faint, the hint of a whisper. 'In the end pride is the only evil, the root of all sins.'
'Pride is all I have.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns

“Is Father good because He is good or because He says He is good?”
― Rafael Nicolás, Angels Before Man

“You will know who the enemy is intimidated by because they're the ones he targets and keeps beating down.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.”
― Anatole France

“Yahweh: You've been unhappy because you've desired things that cannot be.

Lucifer: That's what desire IS. The need for what we can't have. The need for what's readily available is called greed.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 11: Evensong

“I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.”
― Clarence Darrow

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
― Mark Twain

“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”
― Mark Twain

“Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies."
(Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)”
― Voltaire

“But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?”
― Mark Twain