Michel Onfray · 240 pages
Rating: (2.9K votes)
“How strange that excision – female circumcision, with several languages using the same term for both kinds of mutilation – of little girls should revolt the westerner but excite no disapproval when it is performed on little boys. Consensus on the point seems absolute. But ask your interlocutor to think about the validity of this surgical procedure, which consists of removing a healthy part of a nonconsenting child’s body on nonmedical grounds – the legal definition of… mutilation.”
― Michel Onfray, quote from Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
“You cannot kill a breeze, a wind, a fragrance, you cannot kill a dream or an ambition. God, manufactured by mortals in their own quintessential image, exists only to make daily life bearable despite the path that every one of us treads toward extinction. As long as men are obliged to die, some of them, unable to endure the prospect, will concoct fond illusions.We cannot assassinate or kill an illusion. In fact, illusion is more likely to kill us — for God puts to death everything that stands up to him, beginning with reason, intelligence, and the critical mind. All the rest follows in a chain reaction.”
― Michel Onfray, quote from Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
“Désormais, sous prétexte de laïcité, tous les discours se valent : l’erreur et la vérité, le faux et le vrai, le fantasque et le sérieux. Le mythe et la fable pèsent autant que la raison. La magie compte autant que la science. Le rêve autant que la réalité. Or tous les discours ne se valent pas : ceux de la névrose, de l’hystérie et du mysticisme procèdent d’un autre monde que celui du positiviste. Pas plus qu’on ne doit renvoyer dos à dos bourreau et victime, bien et mal, on ne doit tolérer la neutralité, la bienveillance affichée pour la totalité des régimes de discours, y compris ceux des pensées magiques. Faut-il rester neutre ? Doit-on rester neutre ? A-t-on encore les moyens de ce luxe ? Je ne crois pas...”
― Michel Onfray, quote from Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
“La démocratie vit de mouvements, de changements, d’agencements contractuels, de temps fluides, de dynamiques permanentes, de jeux dialectiques. Elle se crée, vit, change, se métamorphose, se construit en regard d’un vouloir issu de forces vivantes. Elle recourt à l’usage de la raison, au dialogue des parties prenantes, à l’agir communicationnel, à la diplomatie autant qu’à la négociation. La théocratie fonctionne à l’inverse : elle nait, vit et jouit de l’immobilité, de la mort et de l’irrationnel. La théocratie est l’ennemie la plus à craindre de la démocratie, avant-hier à Paris avant 1789, hier à Téhéran en 1978, et aujourd’hui chaque fois qu’Al-Quaïda fait parler la poudre.”
― Michel Onfray, quote from Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
“(...) L’intelligence, cette vertu sublime que définit l’art de lier ce qui, a priori, et pour la plupart, passe pour délié.”
― Michel Onfray, quote from Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
“Every theocracy is a denial of democracy. Even better: the smallest hint of theocracy neutralizes the very essence of democracy.”
― Michel Onfray, quote from Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
“There isn't anything I won't do for you, Tru. Nothing I won't do to make you happy. What I feel for you... it's limitless. There is nothing before or after you. There is only you.”
― Samantha Towle, quote from Wethering the Storm
“The air was soft, as it often was in this lovely month, and Eddie inhaled its sweetness. He found himself uplifted as he worked, caught up in something outside himself and his petty wants and needs. The clouds drifted like ice in a tumbler. Through his lens the river seemed made of light, there was the shimmer, and for a moment the world seemed whole to him.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Museum of Extraordinary Things
“Our DNA does not fade like an ancient parchment; it does not rust in the ground like the sword of a warrior long dead. It is not eroded by wind or rain, nor reduced to ruin by fire and earthquake. It is the traveller from an ancient land who lives within us all.”
― Bryan Sykes, quote from The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
“You want to hope for something better than what you have right now, don’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be hoping. But then, you forget that you have it all right now anyway, and you don’t know it. Why not concentrate on the now instead of hoping for better times in the future? Why not understand the now instead of forgetting it and hoping for the future? Isn’t the future just another trap?”
― Anthony de Mello, quote from Awareness: Conversations with the Masters
“Life goes on, regardless of the future, each day was precious all by itself.”
― Karen Kingsbury, quote from A Time to Dance
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