thought of the day.323

“It is natural that people should differ most, and most violently, about the unknowable. . . . There is all the room in the world for divergence of opinion about something that, so far as we can realistically perceive, does not exist.”

~ E. Haldeman-Julius, “The Unknowable”

thought of the day.322

“Another person's words are the windows to his or her world, through which I see what it is like to be that person. When another speaks to me in truth, he or she becomes a transparent self, and releases in me an imaginative experience of his or her existence. If he or she cannot speak, if I do not listen, or if I cannot understand then we must remain suspicious strangers to one another, uncognizant of our authentic similarities and differences.”

~ Sidney Jourard

thought of the day.321

“We have our hands, we have our brains, we have the challenge all around us, and we have within (from whatever source) the will to strive. That is enough; there is no need to assert 'belief' in that which we do not, as yet, know.”

~ Robert A. Heinlein, personal correspondence in 1956 with Warren Allen Smith, cited in Who's Who in Hell

thought of the day.320

“There is no argument worthy of the name that will justify the union of the Christian religion with the State. Every consideration of justice and equality forbids it. Every argument in favor of free Republican institutions is equally an argument in favor of a complete divorce of the State from the Church. History in warning tones tells us there can be no liberty without it. Justice demands it. Public safety requires it. He who opposes it is, whether he realizes it or not, an enemy of freedom. ”

~ Benjamin Underwood, "The Practical Separation of Church & State," an address to the 1876 Centennial Congress of Liberals