Gene Robinson Quotes

Do you not see, first, that - as a mental abstract - physical force is directly opposed to morality; and secondly, that it practically drives out of existence the moral forces?

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, Jesus didn't do it the world's way. He came in and offended the world. He came in and did everything the wrong way.

I'm involved in so many different things, and there are so many profound reactions to what I do because I am big counter culture.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

Recall how often in human history the saint and the rebel have be the same person. (p. 35)

We don't have to go around as the Protestant reformation did, or as the socialist revolution did, and execute each other as soon as we are successful - assuming we'll ever be successful.

I'm not interested in a good man's life. I'm interested in contradiction.

I've always been driven to buck the system.

In the name of religion many great and fine deeds have been performed. In the name of religion also, thousands and millions have been killed, and every possible crime has been committed.

The difference between government and leadership is that leadership has a soul.

Anarchists have always gone against the grain, and that's been a place of hope.

Disobedience is the vehicle of progress.

Help and you will abolish apathy-the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil.

The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn, and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal, outside of the law.

"Mr. Thornton," said Margaret, shaking all over with her passion, "go down this instant, if you are not a coward. Go down and face them like a man. Save these poor strangers, whom you have decoyed here. Speak to your workmen as if they were human beings. Speak to them kindly. Don't let the soldiers come in and cut down poor-creatures who are driven mad. I see one there who is. If you have any courage or noble quality in you, go out and speak to them, man to man."

It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise.

We shall not kill and maybe next time we even won't.

Whatever I had read as a child about the saints had thrilled me. I could see the nobility of giving one's life for the sick, the maimed, the leper. But there was another question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?

When we see a special reformer we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your own virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.

In a certain way, my work had set me up to be against lots of things. If there wasn't some sort of sanction for it in the public world, it might have been...it wouldn't have been tolerated, because people don't want things to get shaken up.

The most identifying trait of humanity is our abilty to be inhumane to one another.

All that is good in Heaven and on Earth is born of love. This war is not just. This war is not good. Love is the only thing worth fighting for.

I'd like to incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to stick their tongues out, to keep insulting authority.

Word it as softly as you please, the spirit of patriotism is the spirit of the dog and wolf. The moment there is a misunderstanding about a boundary line or a hamper of fish or some other squalid matter, see patriotism rise, and hear him split the universe with is war-whoop. The spirit of patriotism being in its nature jealous and selfish, is just in man's line, it comes natural to him - he can live up to all its requirements to the letter; but the spirit of Christianity is not in its entirety possible to him.