Ancient Literature Quotes

“The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still being besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

“I have argued elsewhere (Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence [2005]) that we need to treat ethics in biblical texts just as we treat ethics in any other works of ancient literature. It is a vacuous exercise to pick and choose which atrocities were really ordained by any gods and which were not. We should have a zero-tolerance view of any text or collection of texts that at any time endorses genocide, misogyny, and other atrocities. We always judge ancient texts by modern ethical standards, and the Bible should not be treated differently.”
― Hector Avalos

“...the Sibyl,
Resisting possession, storms through the cavern,
In the throes of her struggle with Phoebus
Apollo. But the more she froths at the mouth
And contorts, the more he controls her, commands her
And makes her his creature. Then of their own accord
Those hundred vast tunnel-mouths gape and give vent
To the prophetess's responses...”
― Seamus Heaney, Aeneid Book VI