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Blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God, to holy persons or things, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable.
- All great truths begin as blasphemies.
- George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska.
- Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
- Ahab, in Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville
- One can only blaspheme if one believes.
- W. H. Auden, Forewords and Afterwords (1973), "Concerning the Unpredictable", p. 472
- When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. 'If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other.
It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything. God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.- Meher Baba, in "How to Love God" (12 September 1954)
- You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time, but I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime.
- Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (1992), p. 96
- Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being... We attack not a person but a belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.
- George William Foote, "Who Are The Blasphemers?" (June, 1882), in Flowers of Freethought (1893), p. 112
- I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.
- Stephen Fry, in "Trefusis Blasphemes" radio broadcast, as published in Paperweight (1993)
- In all 6,236 verses of the Quran, there is not a single verse calling on Muslims to silence blasphemers by force. Not in 1989, when Khomeini called on believers to kill Salman Rushdie, not in 1992, when the Egyptian intellectual Farag Foda was shot in Egypt, and still not in 2011. The Quran is immutable, and all it does is tell believers to respond to blasphemy with dignity. But the doctrine of death for apostasy had taken on a life of its own in the previous two decades and had made its way back to Pakistan. The cultural war that Khomeini had started with his fatwa had seriously restrained the boundaries of expression. Worse: in the time that had elapsed since the assassination of Foda in Cairo in 1992, the reference points had moved. No one called it terrorism anymore; no one mourned the victims as martyrs of the nation, as Foda had been mourned. Few dared to protest against those who killed in the name of Islam, afraid they would meet the same fate. Everything had shifted to the right; the old extremes were the new center—or so it felt.
- Kim Ghattas Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East (2020)
- Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
- "Freedom of Thought," speech accepting the Jerusalem Prize (6 April 1981)
- Graham Greene, Excerpted in the The Spectator (18 April 1981)
- God knows how often all of us have taken the great name of God in vain: or have said more than becomes us, and talked of things we should not do.
- L. J. Jefferies, in Hampden's Case (1684), 9 How. St. Tr. 1103; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 19
- Never talk of that which is within you; God is in us, as well as in you: never make a flourish of what is in you; for the fear of God is before our eyes as well as yours, and what we do, we shall have comfort in, in that it is according to the laws of England, the the rules of which we are sworn to observe, and every man will do righteous things as well as you.
- C. J. Keble, in Lilburne's Case (1649), 4 How. St. Tr. 1313; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 20
- To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place -- not to mention the "ethnic cleansing" presently being performed by Christians in our world -- and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women. (This comprehensive statement was arrived at by examining the statutes of those seven states that have remained in the Dark Ages, so that I might satisfy their definitions of blasphemy.)
- James Randi, Skeptic Magazine, 1995 (Volume 3, No. 4) , stated in an unsuccessful effort to be officially charged with blasphemy .
Robert G. Ingersoll
- Churches are becoming political organizations... It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy — making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind. Surely politicians could be better employed than in passing laws to protect the literary reputation of the Jewish God.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses (1879) Section III, "The Politicians".
- Blasphemy is a padlock which hypocrisy tries to put on the lips of all honest men.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, Blasphemy lecture delivered at Brooklyn, N.Y., prior to Ingersoll's departure for Europe, February 22d, 1885 (reproduced at pg. 105).
- For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument.
- It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- How has the church in every age, when in authority, defended itself? Always by a statute against blasphemy, against argument, against free speech. And there never was such a statute that did not stain the book that it was in and that did not certify to the savagery of the men who passed it.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- By making a statute and by defining blasphemy, the church sought to prevent discussion — sought to prevent argument — sought to prevent a man giving his honest opinion. Certainly a tenet, a dogma, a doctrine, is safe when hedged about by a statute that prevents your speaking against it. In the silence of slavery it exists. It lives because lips are locked. It lives because men are slaves.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- Now, gentlemen, what is blasphemy? Of course nobody knows what it is, unless he takes into consideration where he is. What is blasphemy in one country would be a religious exhortation in another.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- By force you can make hypocrites — men who will agree with you from the teeth out, and in their hearts hate you. We want no more hypocrites. We have enough in every community. And how are you going to keep from having more? By having the air free, — by wiping from your statute books such miserable and infamous laws as this.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- Blasphemy is the word that the majority hisses into the ear of the few.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.
Blasphemy is what a withered last year's leaf says to a this year's bud.
Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice.
Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless.
And let me say now, that the crime of blasphemy, as set out in this statute, is impossible. No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit blasphemy by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God, or a Holy Ghost, or a Son of God. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed.- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- What is blasphemy? I will give you a definition; I will give you my thought upon this subject. What is real blasphemy?
To live on the unpaid labor of other men — that is blasphemy.
To enslave your fellow-man, to put chains upon his body — that is blasphemy.
To enslave the minds of men, to put manacles upon the brain, padlocks upon the lips — that is blasphemy.
To deny what you believe to be true, to admit to be true what you believe to be a lie — that is blasphemy.
To strike the weak and unprotected, in order that you may gain the applause of the ignorant and superstitious mob — that is blasphemy.
To persecute the intelligent few, at the command of the ignorant many — that is blasphemy.
To forge chains, to build dungeons, for your honest fellow-men — that is blasphemy.
To pollute the souls of children with the dogma of eternal pain — that is blasphemy.
To violate your conscience — that is blasphemy.
The jury that gives an unjust verdict, and the judge who pronounces an unjust sentence, are blasphemers.
The man who bows to public opinion against his better judgment and against his honest conviction, is a blasphemer.
Why should we fear our fellow-men? Why should not each human being have the right, so far as thought and its expression are concerned, of all the world? What harm can come from an honest interchange of thought?- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- Whoever increases the sum of human joy, is a worshiper. He who adds to the sum of human misery, is a blasphemer.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, in an appeal to the jury in the trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
- "..Religious tolerance should be at the heart of secularism, but going on killing innocent people is not something that should be endured in the garb of blasphemy...The supremacist, exclusionary, and barbarian nature of ... has become a hazard to the safety of the common man and the secular fabric of this nation, and we have failed to address the very root of this bizarre problem as a state. A state that has failed to answer these real questions:..How is the ... state planning to provide justice to the innocent people who succumbed to Islamic fanaticism in the name of blasphemy? Are there going to be enough laws to prevent such acts of terror? ...Do we deserve to be worried about our children posting something on social media because, literally, it can get them killed?...Whether in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Islamic republics like Pakistan, or secular democracies like India and France, Islam’s flirtations with blasphemy are soaked in blood...
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