Science tries to answer the question: "How?" How do cells act in the body? How do you design an airplane that will fly faster than... sound? How is a molecule of insulin constructed? Religion, by contrast, tries to answer the question: "Why?" Why was man created? Why ought I to tell the truth? Why must there be sorrow or pain or death? Science attempts to analyze how things and people and animals behave; it has no concern whether this behavior is good or bad, is purposeful or not. But religion is precisely the quest for such answers: whether an act is right or wrong, good or bad, and why.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, "Be tolerant--even of evil." Logicall...y the next step would be to say to our commonwealth's criminals, "I disagree that it's all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion." Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I was young ... there never was any question about right and wrong. We knew our catechism, and that was enough; we learned ou...r creed and our duty. Every respectable Church person had the same opinions. But, now if you speak out of the Prayer-book itself, you are liable to be contradicted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols--it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, ...of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhe...re. If you go buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Scared, huh. I ain't never gonna be scared no more. I was though. For a while it looked as though we was beat, good and beat. Look...ed like we didn't have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kind a bad and scared too. Like we was lost and nobody cared.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have often been asked to be fair and view a matter from all sides. I did so, hoping that something might improve if I viewed all... sides of it. But the result was the same. So I went back to viewing things only from one side, which saves me a lot of work and disappointment. For it is comforting to regard something as bad and to be able to use one's prejudice as an excuse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »