“I suppose if you were to meet one you’d be a bit intimidated, because they’d still be a meter tall with tusks.”
“If money can be showered short-term on banks, it can be showered short-term on consumers, whether through benefit handouts, vouchers, tax holidays or scrappage schemes.”
“Without a single exception, every time that the word for interest is used in the Bible, it is condemned.”
“I do like mandatory 72-hour waiting periods. This is a religious position. I have an unshakable faith that people are morons — including you and me. But especially you.”
“If I wanna wear my glasses, I’m wearin’ my glasses. If I, you know, wanna pull my hair back, I’m pullin’ my hair back.”
“There are some folks around who just don’t get historical Jesus studies, because they have a preconceived view that the Gospels are basically the script from four independent documentaries, where journalists followed Jesus around, taking notes on what they saw, and the Gospels are the end product.”
“The closest you come to true moral freedom in your day is when you’re dealing with a stranger. Some counter guy, some woman who gets your coffee.”
“When I came out, I didn’t expect how much it hurt my heart that people assumed the experience I had as a person of faith had never mattered and didn’t exist.”
“In light of the first anniversary of what I have termed the ‘Sojourners Snafu’ I decided to revisit this piece to see what’s shifting.”
“The principle of cura personalis (or “care for the whole person”), central to the mission of Catholic schools, does not come with a qualifier that says ‘unless you are sexually active’ or ‘except if you are a woman.'”
“Below are 20 of the top socially conservative hypocrites of the Religious Right.”
“Total cloture motions from World War I thru end of Reagan admin: 385. Total filed since Republicans lost the Senate in 2006 elections: 359.”
“For the next approximately eight minutes, Thomas is pinned by the two officers, then up to as many as four more arrive and pile on.”
“I guess wasting energy, which favors the large energy companies, particularly Big Oil, held more sway with the Tea Party Republicans (and you have to wonder if there is any other kind left these days) than the light bulb industry who actually make products and create jobs here in America.”
“Sweltering historians of the future are going to hate us a great deal.”
“The problem with the machine is that it will generify. It will suck the film out of the movie. … Nobody does it on purpose, but without somebody telling them exactly what you need, they’re going to give you something that would work for anything.”
Neil Gaiman on Maurice Sendak.
“I knew terrible things … but I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew.”
(For those who don’t recognize the fellow singing Dylan in that video at the top, that’s Tom Wright, better known as N.T. Wright, former Anglican bishop of Durham. Wright is one of my favorite living theologians and an astonishingly prolific author. Who knew he also plays guitar?)
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