Secular Dogma Quotes & Sayings

The modern mind is hard to please; and it generally calls the way of Godfrey ferocious and the way of Francis fanatical. That is, it calls any moral method unpractical, when it has just called any practical method immoral. — G.K. Chesterton

Do you try to look even more adorable every time I see you? — Meghan O'Brien

We began as restless and radical. Remember the spirit of 1997, but by the end of our time in office we had lost our way. — Ed Miliband

No matter how much my heart cried out to be alone. For there was something in it that was clambering to get out. A thing I had not known was there until now. A thing with claws, teeth, and a temper, though I still didn't know what it was called. — Cameron Dokey

The authorities teach that next to the first emanation, which is the Son coming out of the Father, the angels are most like God. And it may well be true, for the soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. For this reason the angel was sent to the soul, so that the soul might be re-formed by it, to be the divine idea by which it was first conceived. — Meister Eckhart

Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak. — Sylvia Plath

If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp ... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment. — Arthur Miller

It is an interesting observation on today's religious climate that many people now get every bit as steamed up about insisting that 'all religions are just the same' as the older dogmaticians did about insisting on particular formulations and interpretations. The dogma that all dogmas are wrong, the monolithic insistence that all monolithic systems are to be rejected, has taken hold of the popular imagination at a level far beyond rational or logical discourse. — N. T. Wright

The demeaning of dignity is almost the only reason for a fight. — Simon Soloveychik

Secular humanism does not have the essential attributes of a religion: belief in a deity, the wish for some sort of afterlife, sacred dogma or texts, or an absolutist moral creed. Instead, it expresses a philosophical and ethical point of view, and it draws upon the scientific method in formulationg its naturalistic view of the nature. — Paul Kurtz

Anyone who sets about hypnotizing half sceptically, who may perhaps seem comical to himself in this situation, and who reveals by his expression, his voice and his bearing that he expects nothing from the experiment, will have no reason to be surprised at his failures, and should rather leave this method of treatment to other physicians who are able to practise it without feeling damaged in their medical dignity, since they have convinced themselves, by experience and reading, of the reality and importance of hypnotic influence — Sigmund Freud

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization. — Sam Harris

Jefferson also founded the first intentionally secularized university in America. His vision for the University of Virginia was for education finally free from traditional Christian dogma. He had a disdain for the influence that institutional Christianity had on education. At the University of Virginia there was no Christian curriculum and the school had no chaplain. — Daryl C. Cornett

The Theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well be my guest. ...In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the Theory of Evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought, not only to devote Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don't hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless, want to believe that each human possess an eternal, individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life and can survive even death intact. — Yuval Noah Harari

The last job I applied for was to be a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority in 1957. — Vernon Jordan

Violence is the language of destruction, flesh so often the subject, fragile, easy to break beyond repair, precious; what else would we burn to make the world take note? — Mark Lawrence

Remember: Pants=Love. Love your pals. Love yourself. — Ann Brashares

I am the mystery of Love itself, the lust and spirit of unity aflame with the infinite passion for the Unknown. Thus are all things made one, in me, by virtue of my secret force; and in this light there is the unspeakable joy, the ineffable bliss, the orgasmic ecstasy of the ages. — David Cherubim

None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we're safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is. — David Guterson

I have an idea that most of all he is running away from love, because it's too big and too demanding. He's running away from us
from you, from me, from his sister, from himself, too. Who wants to be himself, who wants to be so little, and so captured and limited? — William, Saroyan

Father Alfonso and Father Octavio could make Pepe feel as if he were a betrayer of the Catholic faith - as if he were a raving secular humanist, or worse. (Could there be anyone worse, from a Jesuitical perspective?) Father Alfonso and Father Octavio knew their Catholic dogma by rote; while the two priests talked circles around Brother Pepe, and they made Pepe feel inadequate in his belief, they were irreparably doctrinaire. — John Irving

No one commits mass murder in the name of theism or atheism alone. Additional dogmatic principles are needed to justify such grisly outcomes. In the case of theism, religions like Christianity and Islam provide such dogma, creating convenient excuses. Secular totalitarian regimes and religion share this dogmatic element: a belief that a set of ideas are true because an authority figure says so and that questioning those ideas can lead to serious or even deadly consequences. Therefore, — Armin Navabi

Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade-a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense. We make and test risky predictions all the time; our success is not dogma, but a highly probable indication of evolution's basic truth. — Stephen Jay Gould

I should deem a man-of-war incomplete without a body of Marines ... imbued with that esprit that has so long characterized the "Old Corps." — Joshua R. Sands