Jerry Garcia Quotes

The Bible tries to make humans not animals the whole time. I think it's a bit of a mistake.

I think part of what has to happen, somewhere, pretty soon, is that a human template has to come up. We have to start with, OK let's throw out all this other stuff, everything we have thought about it before, throw out all our models, and start with a human. What is a human?

No philosophy based on an incorrect view of the nature of man is likely to produce social good.

We need an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without.

"Taste is not only a part and index of morality, it is the only morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, I'll tell you what you are."

Many things about American life, that even secular people consider good, have flowed from the presence of a robust, resilient institutional Christianity.

The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.

When I was fifteen, a dark shape came into my room at night. It was dark, but it glowed, which is the first of many facts you will have to tackle with your imagination. It wasn't in the shape of a person, but right away I knew it was like a person in every way except for how it looked. As it turns out, our looks are not the main thing that makes us human.

A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be firm rules that could always be relied on. Or they might be ideals that could often be followed without thinking but that sometimes conflicted with one another.

The traditional doctrine of man and not the measurement of skulls and footprints is the key for the understanding of that anthropos who, despite the rebellion of Promethean man against Heaven from the period of Renaissance and its aftermath, is still the inner man of every man, the reality which no human being can deny wherever and whenever he lives, the imprint of a theomorphic nature which no historical change and transformation can erase completely from the face of that creature called man.

Religion is the only solid Base of morals and that Morals are the only possible Support of free governments.

The life of West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion...Remove the Christian foundation, and the values must go too.

There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

A man cannot have character unless he lives within a fundamental system of morals that creates character.

Modern man has not only thrown away Christian theology, he has thrown away the possibility of what our forefathers had as a basis for morality and law.

Religion is the mortar that binds society together; the granite pedestal of liberty; the strong backbone of the social system.

Without God man has no reference point to define himself. 20th century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity.

In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons.

What constitutes the authentic human being?

Only Christianity and its teachings can explain the purpose and meaning of this world- and also gives the basis for right and wrong, good and evil, etc.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

I think we need that to ground us as human beings. I would imagine after an extended amount of time, a vampire might stall a little bit.

The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness ; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience .

There is no true and abiding morality that is not founded in religion.