Stellan Skarsgard Quotes
If I ever lose a job because I've talked about being an atheist, then I don't want that job.
Brooks, Xan. "Stellan Skarsgård: 'My life reads more like Proust than a tabloid'." The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 9 Feb. 2012.
He was not asked to change his views, simply to remain silent, He refused as he felt that his silence would be dishonest. Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
In 1877 Wasburn was dropped from the List of Ministers by the Unitarian Church. He had become very critical of organized and orthodox religion of all kinds.
After this statement was issued by the embassy, a mob stormed the embassy as shown in the graphic. The reason that this statement is an important quotation is that that Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for President took the situation as an opportunity to attack the President. Specifically he claimed that this statement was an “apology” and it was terrible for America to apologize. The administration and most media fact checkers could not find anything in the statement that was an apology as opposed to as statement of United States policy and practice. Romney and his supporters insisted it was an apology. So the statement itself has become a major historical quotation where people can judge for themselves if indeed it was an apology. There are many who believed that under the circumstances an apology might not have been a bad idea. A few years earlier when a Danish magazine had published some insulting cartoons of The Prophet, riots broke out around the world and dozens of people were killed.
Bush was trying to obtain the Republican Presidential Nomination and that party had come under the influence of Protestant Evangelicals who could in effect veto any candidate in the Primary election. Bush, who was already suspect with the Evangelicals, chose to make this statement with the full knowledge that there is no Constitutional citizenship requirement to believe in a god and that a number of the leading founding patriots and founders had been atheists. However his tactics were successful and the following year he was the Republican nominee. Despite this statement, he never acted on it or made it a part of his administration’s principles. Politicians are often placed in these difficult positions where they are pressured into positions not to their liking in order to politically succeed. In this case, he never did more than make the disgraceful statement. He did not adopt any policy of take any action. However, this quotation is unique in American history as the only time an American president ever stated that American citizenship should not be recognized for religious reasons only.
Stellan John Skarsgård is a Swedish actor. He is known for his roles as Jan Nyman in Breaking the Waves (1996), Captain Tupolev in The Hunt for Red October (1990), Professor Gerald Lambeau in Good Will Hunting (1997), Bootstrap Bill Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), Bill Anderson in Mamma Mia! (2008) and the sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), Commander Maximilian Richter in Angels and Demons (2009), Martin Vanger in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Dr. Erik Selvig in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Thor (2011), The Avengers (2012), Thor: The Dark World (2013), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), The Grand Duke in Cinderella (2015), and Boris Shcherbina in the HBO/Sky UK television miniseries Chernobyl (2019). He is set to star in the Andor series (2022).
