Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498)
Roman Catholic prophet of the Dominican Order

It would be good for religion if many books that seem useful were destroyed. When there were not so many books and not so many arguments and disputes, religion grew more quickly than it has since.
-- Girolamo Savonarola, opposing the revival of human scholarship by urging the destruction of collections of classic literature, in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1960), p. 336, quoted from Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History

The only good thing that we owe to Plato and Aristotle is that they brought forward many arguments which we can use against the heretics. Yet they and other philosophers are now in hell.
-- Girolamo Savonarola, opposing the revival of human scholarship by urging the destruction of collections of classic literature, in Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1960), p. 336, quoted from Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History

The sword of the Lord will descend on the Earth swiftly and soon!
-- Girolamo Savonarola, quoted from "A Brief History of the Apocalypse"

Antonin Scalia
US Supreme Court Justice; 'Cretin for Christ'

Devout Christians are destined to be regarded as fools in modern society. We are fools for Christ's sake. We must pray for courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world.
-- Antonin Scalia, adding that the word cretin is derived from the French word for Christian, in a speech at the Mississippi College School of Law (April 9, 1996), quoted from Dr. James Dobson, "Was America a Christian Nation?" (1996)

It is a Constitution that morphs while you look at it like Plasticman.... That is contrary to our whole tradition, to "in God we trust" on the coins, to Thanksgiving proclamations, to (Congressional) chaplains, to tax exemption for places of worship, which has always existed in America.
-- Antonin Scalia, not seven months after the Newdow decision revealed to everybody the origins of "In God We Trust," once again linking it to the era of the Founders, in, Gina Holland, "Justice Discusses Church-State Separation" (AP: January 12, 2003)

On this day, when we're celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage -- to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it's a good idea.
-- Antonin Scalia, speech at a January 12, 2003, Religious Freedom Day rally in Fredericksburg, Virginia, wherein Scalia spent ten minutes to denounce recent lower court decisions, including Newdow, still on appeal and probably headed for the Supreme Court (Naught, naughty, Justice Scalia! Please step down this instant!), as well as promoting the idea that the separation of religion from government is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind, quoted from the Free Lance-Star (January 13, 2003)

[If critics of the Pledge of Allegiance persuaded the public it should be changed] then we could eliminate under God from the Pledge of Allegiance, that could be democratically done.
-- Anton Scalia, knowing full well that the rights and interests of minorities are never obtained through democratic means, Scalia suggests that decisions such as the Newdow case should be done legislatively, by politicians who depend upon the popular vote for their livelihoods, in, Gina Holland, "Justice Discusses Church-State Separation" (AP: January 12, 2003)

The wise do not investigate such silliness.
-- Antonin Scalia, sarcastically degrading "the wise" who do not believe in miracles in general and the Easter Story in particular, in a speech at the Mississippi College School of Law (April 9, 1996), quoted from Tony Mauro and Beverly Pettigrew Kraft, "Justice Scalia Says Religion, Reason Do Mix," USA Today (April 10, 1996)

One can be sophisticated and believe in God. Reason and intellect are not to be laid aside where matters of religion are concerned.
-- Antonin Scalia, in a speech at the Mississippi College School of Law (April 9, 1996), quoted from Tony Mauro and Beverly Pettigrew Kraft, "Justice Scalia Says Religion, Reason Do Mix," USA Today (April 10, 1996)

To be honest about it, that is the view of Christians taken by modern society. Surely those who adhere to all or most of these traditional Christian beliefs are to be regarded as simpleminded.
-- Antonin Scalia, in a speech at the Mississippi College School of Law (April 9, 1996), quoted from Wesley Pruden, "A Kick in the Pants for the 'Fool for Christ,'" Washington Times (April 12, 1996)

To many Americans, everything from the Easter morning to the Ascension had to be made up by the groveling enthusiasts as part of their plan to get themselves martyred.
-- Antonin Scalia, speech, Mississippi College School of Law (April 9, 1996), quoted from Clay Chandler, "Scalia's Religion Remarks: Just a Matter of Free Speech?," The Washington Post (April 15, 1996)

Scalia Did Not Say This:

AP reported the following:
"The court has taken sides in the culture war," Scalia said, adding that he has "nothing against homosexuals."
-- The Associated Press, as quoted in MisterThorne, "What She Said He Said," (November 26, 2003)

Scalia said the court had pretty much "signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," adding:
Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means.
-- Antonin Scalia, dissenting in Lawrence, et al, v. Texas, a case that asked whether anti-"sodomy" laws were constitutional (the Court said they weren't)

Rev Bob Schenck
National Clergy Council

Morality no longer matters in the law.
-- Rev Bob Schenck, whining about the Supreme Court's having upheld the "promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter," according to Justice Anthony M Kennedy, speaking for the majority in the Texas Sodomy case, "Lawrence v. Texas"; this "realm of personal liberty" about which the Court ruled appears to be a realm that The Good Reverend wishes to micromanage, quoted from "High Court Strikes Down Texas Sodomy Law" (Washington Post: June 26, 2003)

Phyllis Schlafly
Founder of Eagle Forum; a leading opponent of gay rights, state-church separation

[President-elect George W] Bush has reached out to these other groups like Blacks and Hispanics.... He ought to do his reaching out to the people who elected him.
-- Phyllis Schlafly, Dallas Morning News, December, 2000, quoted in AANEWS #861, December 24, 2000

Dr. Schund
Otherwise unidentified 19th-century German theologian

Every idea of the Holy Scriptures, from the first to the last page, stands in diametrical opposition to the Darwinian theory.... If Darwin be right in his view of the development of man out of a brutal condition, then the Bible teaching in regard to man is utterly annihilated.
-- Dr. Schund, from Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom (1896), quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (draft: 2001)

Norman Schwarzkopf (b. 1934)
US general

A very great man once said you should love your enemies and that's not a bad piece of advice. We can love them but, by God, that doesn't mean we're not going to fight them.
-- Norman Schwarzkopf, referring to the Persian Gulf War (1991) which took the lives of numerous civilians, from The Observer (London) 14 July 1991, quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations

Seneca (ca. 5 BCE to CE 65)
Roman writer, philosopher, statesman

    • See Seneca's More Reasonable Sayings

All we see and admire today will burn in the universal fire that ushers in a new, just, happy world.
-- Seneca, jumping on the "It's the end of the world!" bandwagon, quoted from "A Brief History of the Apocalypse"

Ariel Sharon (b. 1928)
Prime Minister of the modern state of Israel

People need to know why we, as the Jewish people, have a right to be here. We need to tell people what we are doing here... My tourism guidebook is the Bible.
-- Ariel Sharon, justifying the slaughter of Palestinians -- the modern state of Israel allegedly funds "archaeology" expiditions for the purpose of "proving" the Exodus tale to be historical fact, because without this, they cannot pretend to justify their existence as a nation -- quoted from a letter to Cliff Walker from Robert E Nordlander (August 7, 2001)

Lemuel Shaw (1781-1861)
Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court; described by Massachusetts legislator and attorney Richard Henry Dana as a "man of intense and doting biases" (Bradford)

[Blasphemy is] speaking evil of the Deity with an impious purpose to derogate from the divine majesty, and to alienate the minds of others from the love and reverence of God ... [and] purposely using words concerning God, calculated and designed to impair and destroy the reverence, respect, and confidence due to him.... It is a willful and malicious attempt to lessen men's reverence of God.
-- Lemuel Shaw, defining blasphemy in the 19th century trial against Abner Kneeland, quoted from Roderick Bradford’s biography, D M Bennett: The Truth Seeker (page 100)

Lou Sheldon
The Christian preacher who operates under the moniker of the Traditional Values Coalition, claims that he gives political marching orders to over 43,000 Christian church congregations under 12 denominations

This nation [the United States] was built on nothing but moral and biblical principles at its foundations.
-- Lou Sheldon, lying about the principles behind the formation of the United States of America (probably confusing the US with the British Colonies, which were, in fact, part of a Christian nation, and against which, the founders of the United States ultimately rebelled), in Diana Lynne, "Public Pressure Mounts Against Pledge Ruling" (WorldNetDaily: July 22, 2002)

If we turn our backs on God, God will turn his back on us.
-- Lou Sheldon, a coercive scare-tactic which, in essence, denies the validity of the Bible, particular the tale of how Abraham allegedly asked God if he'd destroy a nation "if there were ten righteous" people living in that nation, in Diana Lynne, "Public Pressure Mounts Against Pledge Ruling" (WorldNetDaily: July 22, 2002)

Christy Shipe
Christian advice columnist for teenage girls, whose column, "Ask the Expert for Girls" appears to be quite the hoot among atheistic readers

God does not want us to be corrupted by close relationships with unbelievers. The fact is, if someone is not for God then they are against Him. You cannot be neutral with God. You're either on His side or on the side of the enemy.
     For these reasons, I think it is also wise to not constantly surround yourself with unsaved friends....
     ... Non-Christians are very critical of hypocrisy in Christians, ...
-- Christy Shipe, in "Is It Wrong to Date a Non-Christian?"

Robert L Simonds
President of Citizens for Excellence in Education, which 'aims to lead every Christian student out of the public school system and into home schools or parochial schools by the year 2010'

We are now in the process of putting born-again Christians on every school board in America.... A school board with five members needs only three Christians to take complete control of a school district. You can literally own that system and control all personnel, curriculum, materials, textbooks and policies.
-- Robert L Simonds, quoted from Texas Freedom Network

American school children are openly being taught the following: how to become a faithful Muslim; how to (and what to) PRAY to the Muslim God Allah; detailed Muslim doctrines from the Koran, accepting the Koran as the only divine authority for them to live by; that Mohammed is God's last prophet, because Allah gave him the words in the Koran for all men to follow; that the Koran teaches that killing all unbelievers (especially Jews and Christians) is an honor that will gain them paradise, where they will dwell with young virgins for a reward for their "good deeds."
-- Robert L Simonds, openly lying about Islam Awareness programs to exploit Evangelical Christians' innate bigotry against Muslims for the purpose of fostering distrust of America's public schools, in Citizens For Excellence in Education, "Presidents' Report: March 2002"

Christians must exit the public schools.
-- Robert L Simonds, quoting God, upon launching his "Rescue 2010" program aimed at pulling Christian students out of public schools, quoted from Freedom Writer, "Robert Simonds: A New Moses?" (July/August, 1998)

We'll take away their power and their money. Money comes from students. We'll break their backs by taking 24 million kids out of the public schools.
-- Robert L Simonds, regarding his "Rescue 2010" program aimed at pulling Christian students out of public schools, quoted from Freedom Writer, "Robert Simonds: A New Moses?" (July/August, 1998)

God is honoring you and all you do, as you are now part of the greatest outreach in all history to save the helpless, innocent Christian church children still in our truly atheist public schools.
     "Wherefore come OUT from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." (II Cor 6:17, KJV).
     This is a direct command to save our children. God is very patient with His people! His Word is our and our churches' guide -- our authority in all things and especially the most basic important things of life-like His clear instructions to save our children. Not to throw them to the wolves to be spiritually and sometimes physically destroyed.
-- Robert L Simonds, regarding his "Rescue 2010" program aimed at pulling Christian students out of public schools, in Citizens For Excellence in Education, "Presidents' Report: March 2002"

Tom Sipling
Pennsylvania evangelist, founder of the "30-Second Kneel Down" movement which builds upon the unintrusively affected "See You at the Pole" events wherein adults have instructed children and teens to "make a statement" by praying together at a flagpole once a year and drawing the attention of the press. The daily "Kneel-Down" regimen is equally high-hat and much more disruptive: to make the act unmistakable, students physically kneel, three times a day, in busy hallways during break-time, where overcrowding makes break-time potentially dangerous.

Guys, listen to me, I promise when you stand up for Jesus, Jesus is offensive, there will be persecution. I doubt though that you'll ever have to drop to your knees like Stephen while they stone you to death, but they might make fun of you. In fact, I promise if you really live boldly for Christ, they will make fun of you.
-- Tom Sipling, accurately predicting that youngsters, seeking to improve the lot of their peers, will make fun of an unimaginative, unthinking group which acts in unison to do stupid, unadvisable things such as act unpredictably and make themselves difficult see in crowded and busy foot-traffic, quoted from Wendy Griffith, "Putting Prayer Back in Schools: The 30-Second Kneel Down" (December, 2002)

You mark yourselves in this generation, tattooing and piercing obviously prevalent among this generation. And I say, you know what, it's time to righteously mark ourselves with Christ. If the world can do it, certainly we can come up with a way to mark ourselves with Jesus, and so certainly, the Kneel Down is a way for them to identify with Christ.
-- Tom Sipling, lacking imagination, resorts to the age-old Christian ploy of taking any fad and somehow applying it not simply to Christ but to his own particular spin on Christ, quoted from Wendy Griffith, "Putting Prayer Back in Schools: The 30-Second Kneel Down" (December, 2002)

How many of you know, we've lived through one generation without organized prayer in our schools? But I'd like to start this year, the first year of the second generation, with a prayer movement to sweep the hallways of our high schools. How many will join us in that prayer movement?
-- Tom Sipling, lacking candor as he resorts to a ploy reminiscent of the fallacy of "Equivocation," first whining about how the Constitutional ban on government-sponsored organized prayer began to be enforced in the schools in 1962 but then proposing, as his solution, voluntary prayer! Gee! What a concept! Quoted from Wendy Griffith, "Putting Prayer Back in Schools: The 30-Second Kneel Down" (December, 2002)

I'm not sure how many there'll be. But I do know this, the ones that are really going to get a hold of this thing, I believe we're just going to see unbelievable supernatural events begin to take place through this generation.
-- Tom Sipling, demonstrating the fruits of his own misplaced priorities and showing precisely what he hopes to do to the kids he takes advantage of for his own political ends by revealing his own need to go back to school and spend a great deal of time off his knees, with his nose in the books, practicing, practicing the rules and techniques for putting together a complete sentence (as this is what school is really for, not "showy prayer before men" or to cashing in on, as a political football), quoted from Wendy Griffith, "Putting Prayer Back in Schools: The 30-Second Kneel Down" (December, 2002)

Robert Sloan
President of Baylor University, the World's largest Baptist institution

Espousing in a Baylor publication a view that is so out of touch with traditional Christian teachings is not only unwelcome, it comes dangerously close to violating university policy, as published in the student handbook, prohibiting the advocacy of any understandings of sexuality that are contrary to biblical teaching.
-- Robert Sloan, explaining why politically correct behavor (censorship) is appropriate in the case of an editorial favoring homosexual marriage, but conveniently forgetting that his is not the only interpretation of the Bible and that the Baptist denomination urges its members to come to their own interpretation of the Bible, quoted in "Baylor President 'Outraged' Over Editorial Defending Gay Marriage" (Dallas Morning News: March 2, 2004)

Ursula Sontbeil [a.k.a. Mother Shipton, née Charles Hindley]
Fictitious character who many still think was real (sound familiar?), schemed up by London bookseller and publisher Charles Hindley

The world then to an end will come
In Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-One.
-- Charles Hindley, The Life and Prophecies of Ursula Sontbeil (Mother Shipton), 1881 edition

The world then at an end we'll view
In Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-Two.
-- Charles Hindley, The Life and Prophecies of Ursula Sontheil (Mother Shipton), 1882 edition

The world then to an end will come
In Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-One.
-- Charles Hindley, The Life and Prophecies of Ursula Sontheil (Mother Shipton), later editions. The work, allegedly written in 1488, was a hoax perpetrated by Charles Hindley, a London bookseller and publisher who unmasked himself in Notes and Queries on 26 April 1873. But what he had started, others carried on. Quoted from David Milsted, The Cassell Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations (1999).

Glenn T Stanton
Activist for Charles Swindoll's far-Right Evangelical Christian organization, Focus on the Family

What abortion is to human life, marriage is to human culture. Marriage is a non-negotiable thing for human civilization.
-- Glenn Stanton, snivelling about the alleged need for a Constitutional amendment banning homosexal marriage (which, to most Evangelicals, means no government advantages normally given to participants in the Christian rite of marriage are to be given to those leading lives that even remotely resemble this rite: no advantages for "domestic partners" -- nothing), quoted in Sheryl Henderson Blunt, "'A Man and a Woman'" (Christianity Today: December, 2003)

Rodney Stark
Sociologist who specializes in religions; professor at the University of Washington

     • Check out: Rodney Stark's Reasonable Side

Not being religious is similar to any other shortsighted, risky and impulsive behavior that some men -- primarily young males -- engage in, such as assault, robbery, burglary, murder and rape.
-- Rodney Stark, as quoted in University of Washington Alumni, "Why are men less religious? It may be form of risk-taking, impulsivity just as criminal behavior is: Inherent Traits Make Men Less Religious (and More Criminal) Says Prof" (January, 2003). Stark is here inverting the definition by seeing religion as a normal part of a healthy human outlook rather than the aberrant addition or appendix to human nature that it is. (One might as well say, "Since most victims ate eggs within two days of a car crash, then it follows that there is a link between eggs and auto fatalities?")

[Some men are shortsighted, so] going to prison or going to hell just doesn't matter to these men.
-- Rodney Stark, abandoning the question, "Why are more women religious?" (that is, "Why do more women take upon themselves this addition to their humanity?") trading it for the question, "Why are fewer men religious?" (that is, "Why do fewer men deviate from their innate human-ness?"), in two papers examining risk-taking behaviors and religion in men, as quoted in University of Washington Alumni, "Why are men less religious? It may be form of risk-taking, impulsivity just as criminal behavior is: Inherent Traits Make Men Less Religious (and More Criminal) Says Prof" (January, 2003)

Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729)
Irish-English essayist and playwright; Joseph Addison's chief collaborator in the "Tatler" and the "Spectator"

I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, by three different lights, in his solitude, his afflictions, and his last moments.... [In these situations such people show themselves] in solitude, incapable or rapture or elevation, ... in distress, [with] a halter or a pistol the only refuge [they] can fly to, ... [and liable to conversion] at the approach of death.
-- Sir Richard Steele, "summarizing and propagating the mythical view of the atheist or skeptic as joyless, without hope, and prone to deathbed conversions -- a view impossible to sustain once the lives of deists and atheists have been properly studied," in The Tatler (No. 111) (1709), quoted from and notes by Jim Herrick, Against the Faith (1985), p. 15, critically edited by Cliff Walker

Ben Stein
American comic

I am back in LA now. And I keep thinking back to my time in New York after the bombings.... I was crying so much I could not see, and the other diners joined in, and I thought, What do you do with such atheistic evil?
-- Ben Stein, revealing to viewers which adjective best modifies the noun evil when he wishes to describe what to him would be the worst, most heinous, most unthinkable evil imaginable, in a remark made on the air on September 17, 2001, for which Stein later apologized, quoted from American Atheists

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925)
Founder of Anthroposophy, a pseudoscientific spin-off of Theosophy; Steiner is noted for his many books about Atlantis and Lemur, and his racist hypotheses which derived from his beliefs about these mythical continents; the Waldorf Schools, based on his beliefs, are accused and even being sued for religious indoctrination and problems involving Separationist issues

Agnosticism has seized hold of science, education and social life, and it affects millions of men who very often are quite unaware of the fact. It then lays hold of the realm of ideas, separating this from the world of true reality upon which alone humanity should have its stand; thus creating an inner division which weakens the soul forces of men. Through this division, licence is given to all the lower instincts, as we can recognize to be prominently the case in the world today. The realm of feeling also becomes unsatisfied; unfertilized by ideas it degenerates, hardens and becomes sentimental, or else it is engulfed in the life elementary instincts. This shows itself particularly in art, which is either sweetly unreal or else is naturalistic. True art creates its own style, and true style can only come from men's supersensible experiences. Agnosticism robs us of the truths which must live in art.
-- Rudolf Steiner, debauching agnosticism which, in its day (a la Ingersoll), was virtually indistinguishable from the popular expressions strong atheism of today, by using criticisms of that day's "agnosticism" that are essentially indistinguishable from certain theist's criticism of today's atheism, from Fruits of Anthroposophy: Lectures in Stuttgart August to November 1921, p. 7, quoted in Bobby Matherne's review in A Reader's Journal (2000)

We have seen that blood united to blood in the case of but remotely connected species of animals, kills; blood united to blood in the case of more closely allied species of animals does not kill. The physical organism of man survives when strange blood comes in contact with strange blood, ... but clairvoyant power perishes under the influence of this mixing of blood, or exogamy.
-- Rudolf Steiner, waxing racist on is by noting that the population on Atlantis, unable to speak, instead thought in pictures and communicated through telepathy; Steiner explains that the most highly developed people accumulated in Asia, and that the Aryan race derives from this genetically and culturally advanced group, and that racial intermixing is bad, from Occult Significance of Blood (1906), quoted from The Page of Reason's The Page of Unreason

In diabetes mellitus the case is as follows: the ego-organization, as it submerges in the astral and etheric realm, is so weakened that it can no longer effectively accomplish its action upon the sugar-substance. The sugar then undergoes the processes in the astral and etheric realms which should take place in the ego-organization.... From all this we see that a real healing process for diabetes mellitus can only be initiated if we are in a position to strengthen the ego-organization of the patient.
-- Rudolf Steiner, showing us how to cure diabetes by dancing, as dance strengthens the ego, from Fundamentals of Therapy chapter VIII (1924), quoted from The Page of Reason's The Page of Unreason

You catch a fairly young field-vole and flay it... We take the skin, when Venus stands in the sign of the scorpion, and combust the skin... Now take the ash, which you got this way, and pepper it out on the fields.
-- Rudolf Steiner, blithering away about a concoction of some sort, En Lantbrukskurs, Stockholm (1966), quoted from The Page of Reason's The Page of Unreason

Mark D Stern
General counsel for the American Jewish Congress

There's no realistic federal protection for religious believers anymore. State and local governments can intrude, as long as they don't single out any faith.
-- Mark D Stern, bemoaning the demise of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, quoted from "Religious Groups Howl over Decision on RFRA: A Blow Against 'Special Rights' For Believers Fuels Support For The Religious Freedom Amendment" from American Atheists' AANEWS dispatch (June 25, 1997)

Johannes Stöffler (1452-1531)
Professor at Tübingen University

The world will end by a giant flood on February 20th 1524.
-- Johannes Stöffler, prompting hundreds to take to the Rhine on the appointed day, where they all drowned when a storm capsized their boats, quoted from David Milsted, The Cassell Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations (1999)

J B Stoner
Christian white supremacist leader who was ejected from the KKK, the John Birch society, and the American Nazi Party for being too radical, fascist, etc.

We had lost the fight for the preservation of the white race until God himself intervened in earthly affairs with AIDS to rescue and preserve the white race that he had created.... I praise God all the time for AIDS
-- J B Stoner, "Praise God For AIDS," to the 1994 Aryan Nations Congress

AIDS is a racial disease of Jews and Niggers, and fortunately it is wiping out the queers. I guess God hates queers for several reasons. There is one big reason to be against queers and that is because every time some white boy is seduced by a queer into becoming a queer means his white bloodline has run out. He wont have any white offspring. What it does is that it cuts down on the numbers of the white race. Cause they are not breeding.
-- J B Stoner, "Praise God For AIDS," to the 1994 Aryan Nations Congress

Infidels: Repent of Mohammedanism or burn in hell forever, throughout eternity.
-- J B Stoner, "White Christian Party Attacks Equality, Purity, Beauty and Religion of the Negroes," addressed a letter to a gathering of Muslims in Convention in Chicago during February 1957

Rev Jimmy Swaggart
American televangelist caught masturbating with prostitutes

Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it.... Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
-- Rev Jimmy Swaggart (attributed: source unknown)

The Media is ruled by Satan. But yet I wonder if many Christians fully understand that. Also, will they believe what the Media says, considering that its aim is to steal, kill, and destroy?
-- Rev Jimmy Swaggart, The Evangelist, January 1988

Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest.
-- Rev Jimmy Swaggart, quoted from http://i.am/not_a_crook

The word "philosophy" simply means "a pursuit of wisdom, the purpose of life, and a search for Truth." However, this quest, because it originates with man, can never find the answers. In fact, man cannot reach God or know God by intellectual pursuit.
-- Rev Jimmy Swaggart, "The Gospel and Philosophy," in The Evangelist, January 1988

If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.
-- Rev Jimmy Swaggart, 20 May 1988

Frank Zappa on Swaggart

"Anybody hear the great news, today? Jimmy Swaggart under investigation! Oh Ja-ee-zus! One day every one of those cocksuckers will get caught! I understand in the case of Mr Swaggart, that he claims that it was not multiple encounters with many prostitutes -- apparently, only one sweet young thing. And he did tell Cal Thomas of the Moral Majority that the sex act itself was not fully consumated. However he did admit to doing something por-no-graphic with the girl. Let's use our imaginations, ladies and gentlemen!"
-- Frank Zappa, opening remarks to "Stink Foot" at the Make A Jazz Noise Here show, recorded in 1988

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Irish-born English writer known for his satirical works

     • See Johathan Swift's More Reasonable Sayings

The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
-- Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Religion (1768), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
-- Jonathan Swift, an early expression of the idea that misrepresents the universe as being essentially complex (it is almost pure randomness); this idea is used to falsely portray evolution as teaching that everything happened by "pure chance," ignoring the role natural selection plays in evolution, quoted from Kerrie DeGood's Atheism Quotation Page

I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good.... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism.
-- Randall Terry, quoted in The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana (August 16, 1993). [This was the very first entry into PAMBLOQ's Scary Quotes section.]

When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we'll execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed.
-- Randall Terry, referring to doctors who perform abortions, quoted from TheWarOnFaith.com

What it is coming down to is who runs the country. It's us against them. It's the good guys versus the bad guys. It's the God-fearing people against the pagans, and some of the pagans are going to church.
-- Randall Terry, in a speech (1992), confusing the religion of Paganism with the use of the word pagan as slang for atheist or unchurched; religious Pagans would not go to church, but atheists are often forced to attend Christian worship services because the sheer bigotry against us at the hands of the Christian majority almost guarantees social failure lest we at least pretend to be Christian

You better believe that I want to build a Christian nation, because the only option is a pagan nation. Not that the government can make someone a Christian by decree. A Christian nation would be defined as "We acknowledge God in our body politic, in our communities, that the God of the Bible is our God, and, we acknowledge that His law is supreme."
-- Randall Terry, quoted from TheWarOnFaith.com

There is going to be war, [and Christians may be called to] take up the sword to overthrow the tyrannical regime that oppresses them.
-- Randall Terry, describing his plan at the 1995 National Operation Rescue meeting in Louisiana, quoted from Refuse & Resist!, "Who's Coming To Dayton -- An Introduction"

Tertullian [Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus] (160?-220?)
First important Christian ecclesiastical writer

     • See Tertullian's More Reasonable Sayings

The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed because it is absurd. And he was buried and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.
-- Tertullian, responding to Marcion's rejection of the resurrection tale as being absurd, from The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A Roberts and J Donaldson (1905), vol. 3, p. 525, quoted from George H Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (1979), p. 99

Woman, thou shouldst ever be clothed in rags and in mourning, appearing only as a penitent, drowned in tears, and expiating thus the sin of having caused the fall of the human race. Woman thou art the gate of the devil. It is thou who hast corrupted those whom Satan dare not attack face to face.
-- Tertullian, from from Susan H Wixon, "Woman: Four Centuries of Progress," speech delivered at Freethinkers' International Congress in Chicago, Illinois, in October, 1893, made a Truth Seeker pamphlet in December 1893, quoted from Gaylor, Women Without Superstition, p. 285. Wixon responds: "You will note that Tertullian regarded woman as worse then the devil."

Encarta: Partisan Spirit, Specious Reasoning

"[Tertullian's] work is remarkable for its blunt sarcasm, epigrammatic phrasing, aggressive partisan spirit, and skillful -- though sometimes specious -- reasoning."
-- "Tertullian," Microsoft® Encarta Encyclopedia 2000. ©1993-1999 Microsoft Corporation.

Tim Todd
Lead organizer for 'Truth for Youth Revival Week' which claims to have 'smuggled' into our public schools over 100,000 copies of a paraphrase of the Christian New Testament (intertwined with radical Right political propaganda in comic form); Todd takes advantage of teens' rights to give, for example, a religious note or even a pamphlet to a fellow teen; teaching teens to abuse this right, Todd exploits them as grunts in his large-scale political propagandizing effort, disguising it as simple personal religious evangelism; the scam works by offering the special propaganda-Bibles free to any teen who agrees to take it to school and give it to a non-Christian; this is where the law and the Religious Liberties of teens and parents get directly compromised: only the parents are allowed to teach religious values to their own children; one can only wonder whether Todd's organization addresses its own glorification and emulation of organized crime (whether this contributes to the delinquency of minors) or how the group justifies enticing naïve teens into treading so dangerously close to committing a wilful violation of the civil rights of their fellows

It is not legal for me as an adult to give Bibles away in school, but it is legal for teenagers ... [to give them away so our organization can counter] the liberal agenda of homosexuality, premarital sex, abortion and evolution that is aggressively being promoted in our public schools.
-- Tim Todd, explaining a new mission to, as he says, have teenagers "smuggle" teen-oriented Bibles onto public school campuses, quoted from Jim Brown, "Project Gets Teens to Smuggle Bibles Into Public Schools -- Legally" (August 25, 2003; bracketed matter quoted directly from Agape Press review, although the emphasis is by PAM)

Mitchell Tolle
Watercolor artist; 'Christian Nation' revisionist

Our forefathers carefully blended their faith into everyday life at every opportunity. They put the words, "In God we Trust" [1] on our money, included the phrase "One Nation Under God" [2] in our pledge to the flag, and gave us glorious songs like "God Bless America!" [3] and "America, America, God shed his grace on thee - And crowned thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!" [4] It gives me goose-bumps just to think about it....
     My hope is that millions will discover this picture, a subtle yet powerful claim to the Christian roots of our nation.
-- Mitchell Tolle, giving us goosebumps just realizing that someone would get so fast and loose with the story of our country just to promote the idea of legislating one sect's narrow religious views upon those who don't agree -- by teaching that America has always been this way, in hopes that perhaps enough people will believe this yarn if they only repeat it enough times, in a promotional blurb for his "One Nation Under God" print which was commissioned by Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association (September 27, 2001) for the purpose of funding more anti-American revisionist propaganda such as the above. Note that although "forefathers" is designed to concoct imagery of "founding fathers," (1) "In God We Trust" was not placed on any money until the 1860s, and then only sporadically on a few low-value coins. It did not appear on currency until the 1960s, the result of a decision made during the viciously anti-atheistic McCarthy Era of the Cold War. (2) The phrase "under God" was likewise injected into the Pledge of Allegiance during the McCarthy Era, a period of brutally institutionalized anti-atheistic bigotry tolerated only because, out of fear of severe legal and economic reprecussions, nobody dared to speak out against this madness. Perhaps Senator Joseph McCarthy, who unjustly and untruthfully equated atheism with evil and anti-Americanism, is Tolle's idea of a "forefather." In any event, we don't consider it much of an act of courage or honor to go along with an idea which earned such stiff punishment for opposing. Tolle can have these "heroes" who stood up and said what you had better have said back then if you knew what was good for you. (3) "God Bless America!" was recorded by Kate Smith in 1938. (4) "America, The Beautiful" was written by Katherine Lee Bates in 1893. In any event, though the language "forefathers" was clearly meant to imply "Founding Fathers," these dates fall far short of being considered examples of our country's "roots,"

Dr. Elmer Towns
American theologian; cofounder of Liberty University, dean of the School of Religion

No man goes to hell for his sin -- people go to hell for unbelief ... they have not believed in Jesus Christ.
-- Dr Elmer Towns, showing that the central myth initially designed to keep the cult members in line has become the primary form of bigotry (antiatheism) perpetrated by the Christian religion, Dr. Towns debunks the thinking of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Dr. Albert Mohler, who says that 's belief in one of the cardinal doctrines of Protestantism, "Particular Redemption," which says that Jesus died only for those whom he had already chosen ("elected") from the foundation of the Earth to eventually get saved -- meaning that the rest of us were not elected, and thus, by default, will burn in the Christian Hell forever and a day; this is part of the famous "Five Points of Calvinism": Total Depravity (Original Sin), Unconditional Election ("not by works"), Particular Redemption (Limited Atonement, as in, Jesus died for some), Irresistable Grace ("God makes an offer you can't refuse -- even if you want to"]; Particular Redemption [once saved, always saved]), quoted in Jim Brown, "Theologians Differ on the 'All' for Whom Christ Died" (AgapePress: January 13, 2003) source citation commentary by John Pinckney

Father David Trosch
Roman Catholic priest who advocates the vigilante murdering of abortion providers and justifies this by calling his effort a 'war'

Sodomy is a graver sin than murder. -- Unless there is life there can be no murder.
-- Father David Trosch, "Failed Sodomy / Homosexual Acts: Abortion Commonly Follows Practical Sodomy"

Desmond Tutu (b. 1931)
South African clergyman and anti-apartheid activist

Beware when you take on the Church of God. Others have tried and have bitten the dust.
-- Desmond Tutu, April 1987, quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations

If we are to say that religion cannot be concerned with politics then we are really saying that there is a substantial part of human life in which God's writ does not run. If it is not God's, then whose is it? Who is in charge if not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
-- Desmond Tutu, The Words of Desmond Tutu (Naomi Tutu ed.; 1989), quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations

The Subtle Fulmination of the Encircled Sea

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Grab some quotes to embellish your web site,
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