Francis Bezooyen

“The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people’s interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise.”
― Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

“I don't think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.”
― Alain de Botton

“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”
― Carl Sagan