Quotes from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“It is often said, inside the Church and out of it, that there is something grotesque about lectures on the sexual life when delivered by those who have shunned it. Given the way that the Church forbids women to preach, this point is usually made about men. But given how much this Church allows the fanatical Mother Teresa to preach, it might be added that the call to go forth and multiply, and to take no thought for the morrow, sounds grotesque when uttered by an elderly virgin whose chief claim to reverence is that she ministers to the inevitable losers in this very lottery.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“Ethiopians imagine their gods as black and snub-nosed; Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired. But if horses or lions had hands, or could draw and fashion works as men do, horses would draw the gods shaped like horses and lions like lions, making the gods resemble themselves. Xenophanes”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“I began the project of judging Mother Teresa’s reputation by her actions and words rather than her actions and words by her reputation.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“There should be philosophy and knowledge for the elect, religion and sentimentality for the masses”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“Who would be so base as to pick on a wizened, shriveled old lady, well stricken in years, who has consecrated her entire life to the needy and the destitute? On the other hand, who would be so incurious as to leave unexamined the influence and motives of a woman who once boasted of operating more than five hundred convents in upward of 105 countries—“without counting India”? Lone self-sacrificing zealot, or chair of a missionary multinational? The scale alters with the perspective, and the perspective alters with the scale.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“Government regulations required that an elevator be installed for the use of the disabled. Mother would not allow an elevator. The city offered to pay for the elevator. Its offer was refused. After all the negotiations and plans, the project for the poor was abandoned because an elevator for the handicapped was unacceptable.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“Three years later, Mr. Turley has received no reply to his letter. Nor can anybody account for the missing money: saints, it seems, are immune to audit.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“The point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and subjection. Mother”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“The point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and subjection.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“This is a small episode in an unending argument between those who know they are right and therefore claim the mandate of heaven, and those who suspect that the human race has nothing but the poor candle of reason by which to light its way.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

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“Вместо това тръгнали в друга посока, излезли от шахматната дъска на живота, без да подозират. Вървели, притегляни от нишката, която ги свързвала.

Хвани края на нишката,
с другия край в ръка
ще пребродя света.
Ако ме изгубиш от очи,
майчице моя, тегли.


Смъртта изтеглила нишката им, дръпнала здраво. Отнякъде влетял снаряд.
Точно в същия миг се били срещнали. Майка и дъщеря. Утроба и плод.”
― Margaret Mazzantini, quote from Twice Born

“The happy passive nature, locked up with itself like a mirror in an airy room, reflects what goes on but demands not to be approached. A pact with life, a pact of immunity, appears to exist-But this pact is not respected for ever- a street accident, an overheard quarrel, a certain note in a voice, a face coming too close, a tree being blown down, someone's unjust fate- the peace tears right across.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart

“They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.”
― Louise O'Neill, quote from Asking For It

“After all, Fnick is Superman," said Iggy.
"Shut up, Jeff," I said, but I was smiling. I lifted Iggy's fingers to my face so that he knew.”
― James Patterson, quote from School's Out - Forever

“that I wasn’t going crazy. For a long time I thought that this story should begin with what happened to me at the church, when my life”
― Dani Atkins, quote from Fractured

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