Postreligious Quotes & Sayings

The many pro-surveillance advocates I have debated since Snowden blew the whistle have been quick to echo Eric Schmidt's view that privacy is for people who have something to hide. But none of them would willingly give me the passwords to their email accounts, or allow video cameras in their homes. — Glenn Greenwald

Tropical nights are hammocks for lovers. — Anais Nin

If psychoanalysis was late-19th-century secular Judaism's way of constructing spiritual meaning in a post-religious world and retail is the late 20th century's way of constructing meaning in a postreligious world, what does it mean that I'm impersonating the father of psychoanalysis in a store window to commemorate a religious holiday? — David Rakoff

Espionage is not supposed to be sporting, otherwise it would not be clandestine. — Khalid Muhammad

If happiness could be bought, we'd probably be unhappy at the price tag. If only the secret of happiness was as simple as getting wealthy and spending more. — Patrick Dixon

Barrayaran warships tended to be not so much mothballed as hoarded. The eldest members of the General Staff were notorious for an attitude toward ordnance that resembled that of a famine survivor stashing foodstuffs, and perhaps for analogous reasons. Ships that most Nexus militaries would have sent directly to the scrapyards were instead tucked away to age a few more decades like dodgy food in the back of a refrigerator, out of sight, before the Staff - or more likely, its successors - was finally persuaded to give them up. — Lois McMaster Bujold

When I look back on my life, I marvel at how it hasn't been the major decisions that have most impacted its course. It's been the tiny, seemingly inconsequential ones. Think about it. Think about the sudden events that have affected your life. With most of them, wasn't it just a matter of seconds one way or the other? Wasn't it the little decisions that caused you to cross this street or that, to move yourself into or out of harm's way? These are the things that get you in the end. Who you marry, what you choose as your profession, how you were raised - yes, that is the big picture. But, as they say, the devil's in the details. Well, — Lisa Unger

I remember the Washington in which I grew up as a genuine small town. Maybe this is true for everyone, that we all feel that the times in which we grew up were simpler, less complex. — Katharine Graham

It is to a dramatist, which is to say, to an unfrocked psychoanalyst, stunning that that which has sustained the Left in my generation, its avatar, its prime issue, has been abortion. For, whether or not it is regarded as a woman's right, an unfortunate necessity, or murder, which is to say, irrespective of differing and legitimate political views, to enshrine it as the most important test of the Liberal, is, mythologically, an assertion to the ultimate right of a postreligious Paganism. — David Mamet

[ ... ] leaving for a day or two that hopeless sense of loss which makes beauty what it is: a distant lone tree against golden heavens; ripples of light on the inner curve of a bridge; a thing impossible to capture. — Vladimir Nabokov

The direction you choose to face determines whether you're standing at the end or the beginning of a road. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Starship command is like comedy, Number One. Timing is everything. — David Mack

Sometimes when I see a performance that really takes me, I struggle. How can I express this to this person, I want this person to know how I felt. I want to get this across, and it's not very easy. — John Astin

Guinevere grimaced. 'Do you know how cloying love can be, Derfel? I don't want to be worshipped. I don't want every whim granted. I want to feel there's something biting back. — Bernard Cornwell

God made the world with a heart full of love,
Then He looked down from Heaven above,
And saw that we all need a helping hand,
Someone to share with, who'll understand.
He made special people to see us through
The glad times and the sad times, too;
A person on whom we can always depend,
Someone we can call a friend.
God made friends so we'll carry a part
Of His perfect love in all our hearts. — Khalil Gibran

All patriarchists exalt the home and family as sacred, demanding it remain inviolate from prying eyes. Men want privacy for their violations of women ... All women learn in childhood that women as a sex are men's prey. — Marilyn French

When grace is given it comes to us as joy, maybe, but it can also be earned, I am convinced, through the rigorous examination of the sources of pain. — May Sarton