Quote #157: Jefferson on the nature of freedom of religion

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone[.] 

--  The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786).

Quote #151: man as a social animal

"And indeed nature, or rather God Who is the author of nature, wills that man should live in a civil society; and this clearly shown both by the faculty of language, the greatest medium of intercourse, and by numerous innate desires of the mind, and the many necessary things, and things of great importance, which men isolated cannot procure, but which they can procure when joined and associated with others."

- Pope Leo XIII, Diuturnum (On Civil Government) (1881).

Quote #125: on fighting for justice

"Power never concedes anything without a demand. It never has and it never will." 


- Frederick Douglass (1808-1895), former slave, African-American civil rights activist, abolitionist and American political philosopher.

CXX

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

-C. S. Lewis

Quote #93: on the purpose of government

"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful."
- Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), American founding father.

Quote #72: "the sacred had finally overspread the world."

A great Jewish scholar meditates on what the destruction of the Second Temple meant for Jewish practice in the world:

If we appreciate the force of powerful emotions aroused by the Temple cult, we may understand how grand a revolution was effected in the simple declaration, so long in coming, that with the destruction of the Temple the realm of the sacred had finally overspread the world. We must now see in ourselves, in our selfish motives to be immolated, the noblest sacrifice of all. So Rabban Gamaliel son of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch said, "Do His will as if it was your will, so that He may do your will as if it ws His will. Make your will of no effect before His will, that He may make the will of others of no effect before your will." His will is that we love our neighbors as ourselves. Just was willingly as we would contribute bricks and mortar for the building of a sanctuary, so willingly we ought to contribute love, renunciation, self-sacrifice, for the building of a sacred community. If one wants to do something for God in a time when the Temple is no more, the offering must be the gift of selfless compassion. The holy altar must be the streets and marketplaces of the world.

- Jacob Neuser, Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity (Fortress Press: 1984), pgs. 98-99.

Quote #66: on justice and leadership

Sage advice from the pre-Christian Jewish tradition on the need for those charged with leadership in the community to seek both justice and holiness:

Love justice, you rulers of the earth; set your mind upon the Lord in the right way, and seek him in singleness of heart; for he is to be found by those who trust him without question, and he makes himself known to those who never doubt him. Dishonest thinking cuts people off from God, and if fools like liberties with his power he shows them up for what they are. Wisdom will not enter a shifty soul, nor make her home in a body that is mortgaged to sin. This holy spirit of discipline will shun falsehood; she cannot stay in the presence of unreason, and will withdraw at the approach of injustice.

- Wisdom of Solomon 1.1-5 (circa 2nd century B.C.) (Revised English Bible translation).

Quote #43: on virtue in a republic

"Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure(and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments." -- Charles Carroll of Carollton, American founding father (1737-1832).

And welcome back to regular posting, Jake!

Quote XLII

"History will never accept difficulties as an excuse."

-John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

Quote No. XXIV

"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it." -- Malcolm X

Quote No. XX

"Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped." -- President Calvin Coolidge

Quote No. XVII

One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.

-Saint Thomas More

Quote No. XVI

"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will." -- Frederick Douglass