Religion
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(82,333 posts)mrdmk
(2,943 posts)The following is more likely,
"Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool." -- François-Marie Arouet i.e. 'Voltaire'
Here is another from Voltaire: "There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times."
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)He would have no problem having that quote attributed to him.
Leontius
(2,270 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Leontius
(2,270 posts)Promethean
(468 posts)Famous quotes by famous people is a big pool and in this case we are looking at famous anti-theist misquoted as saying something from another famous anti-theist. It was corrected to Voltaire and thus the record is set straight and you feel the need to keep flinging mud. Are you saying you'd never make that kind of mistake? Are you perfect in this regard and would never mix up something like that in your remembrance? It is such a trivial mistake that these posts show a lot about you, reaching super hard to prove a non-point. Love your little vendetta don't you?
Leontius
(2,270 posts)It's not even about the misattribution of a quote it's about claiming that Twain would lie about it and claim it for his own in the poster opinion. This statement and other "misquotes", "misattributions" speaks for itself about this posters problem with veracity and honesty.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Leontius
(2,270 posts)Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Leontius
(2,270 posts)Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)I'd elaborate, but when in Rome...
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Well done, Leo! Well done!
Leontius
(2,270 posts)plagiarizing. It's a great testament to what passes as your morals.
UrbScotty
(23,980 posts)Just because you'd like to think it would be true, doesn't mean it actually would be true.
Sorry.
struggle4progress
(118,236 posts)I really enjoyed reading Letters from the Earth, Extracts From Adam's Diary, and Was it Heaven? Or Hell?
I have no idea what his actual religious views were, but he was an extraordinarily talented writer, a brilliant humorist, an acute and sympathetic observer of the human condition, and a genuine humanist with great moral sensibility
LostOne4Ever
(9,286 posts)[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]Though I would love to say he was an atheist, the truth is that I have not come across anything that proves that beyond doubt.
Given the time frame, and guessing based upon the writings I have read, he was either an atheist or a deist. I think it is most likely that he was a deist for the most part, but it is my understanding that he was bipolar and his final days were most bitter.
He probably swung from one to the other constantly.
One thing that I think can be said, is that he was a Heretic with his own sense of morality and humanism.[/font]
sammythecat
(3,568 posts)and yet "have no idea what his actual religious views were."
Really? Not enough there that you could even make a guess?
struggle4progress
(118,236 posts)LostOne4Ever
(9,286 posts)[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Nothing could be more characteristic of him. He created all those infamous people, and he alone was responsible for their conduct. Not one of them deserved death, yet it was certainly good policy to extinguish them; especially since in creating them the master crime had already been committed, and to allow them to go on procreating would be a distinct addition to the crime. But at the same time there could be no justice, no fairness, in any favoritism -- all should be drowned or none.
No, he would not have it so; he would save half a dozen and try the race over again. He was not able to foresee that it would go rotten again, for he is only the Far-Sighted One in his advertisements
[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Then at last, Noah sailed; and none too soon, for the Ark was only just sinking out of sight on the horizon when the monsters arrived, and added their lamentations to those of the multitude of weeping fathers and mothers and frightened little children who were clinging to the wave-washed rocks in the pouring rain and lifting imploring prayers to an All-Just and All-Forgiving and All-Pitying Being who had never answered a prayer since those crags were builded, grain by grain, out of the sands, and would still not have answered one when the ages should have crumbled them to sand again.
[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]On the third day, about noon, it was found that a fly and been left behind. The return voyage turned out to be long and difficult, on account of the lack of chart and compass, and because of the changed aspects of all coasts, the steadily rising water having submerged some of the lower landmarks and given to higher ones an unfamiliar look; but after sixteen days of earnest and faithful seeking, the fly was found at last, and received on board with hymns of praise and gratitude, the Family standing meanwhile uncovered, our of reverence for its divine origin. It was weary and worn, and had suffered somewhat from the weather, but was otherwise in good estate. Men and their families had died of hunger on barren mountain tops, but it had not lacked for food, the multitudinous corpses furnishing it in rank and rotten richness. Thus was the sacred bird providentially preserved.
Providentially. That is the word. For the fly had not been left behind by accident. No, the hand of Providence was in it. There are no accidents. All things that happen, happen for a purpose. They are foreseen from the beginning of time, they are ordained from the beginning of time. From the dawn of Creation the Lord had foreseen that Noah, being alarmed and confused by the invasion of the prodigious brevet fossils, would prematurely fly to sea unprovided with a certain invaluable disease. He would have all the other diseases, and could distribute them among the new races of men as they appeared in the world, but he would lack one of the very best -- typhoid fever; a malady which, when the circumstances are especially favorable, is able to utterly wreck a patient without killing him; for it can restore him to his feet with a long life in him, and yet deaf, dumb, blind, crippled, and idiotic. The housefly is its main disseminator, and is more competent and more calamitously effective than all the other distributors of the dreaded scourge put together. And so, by foreordination from the beginning of time, this fly was left behind to seek out a typhoid corpse and feed upon its corruptions and gaum its legs with germs and transmit them to the re-peopled world for permanent business. From that one housefly, in the ages that have since elapsed, billions of sickbeds have been stocked, billions of wrecked bodies sent tottering about the earth, and billions of cemeteries recruited with the dead.
[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]-Letters From the Earth
And yes, this really is from Mark Twain.[/font]
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Now don't some people look silly quibbling with the op over one quote?
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Sure sounds like it! He's so disrespectful toward people's deeply-held religious beliefs!