Its pretty common that people will take a "bad quote" and say it is representative of a whole belief system. That is particularly true of Christianity and Islam who focus on written texts such as the Bible and the Qur'an that are widely available. However, religious beliefs are typically also political tools and very quickly become the means to rationalise conflict. Most religions therefore have "dark spots" on their history which we are ashamed of and feel guilty about privately but are uncomfortable to admit in public. The truth is much more complicated if we are willing to go outside of our comfort zone and see how frail human beings are. moral outrage is cheapened by hypocrisy even if there are good grounds to be outraged.
This thread is in Comparative Religion so members cannot attack one another and are free share what they feel are "bad quotes" from their belief system without being humiliated for it. There is nothing wrong with doing this even if we were to argue that are "corruptions" and "perversions" of the good intentions behind your beliefs. Accepting our fallibility it part of being human and can offer valuable moral lessons about how easily we as human beings are seduced by our pride in the belief in our good intentions at the expense of our conscience.
I prepared this list of Quotes by Communists for another thread but it would seem useful to share it here. Its quite a lot of baggage to try and hide by any standard of the imagination so sharing it is still something of a release even if I am relatively open about its short-comings.
“We will turn our hearts into steel, which we will temper in the fire of suffering and the blood of fighters for freedom. We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the floodgates of that sea. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritsky, Zinovief and Volodarski, let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois - more blood, as much as possible.” (Bolshevik newspaper "Krasnaya Gazeta" 1918)
"The idea of a concentration camp is excellent" (Joseph Stalin)
"We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist notion about the Sanctity of human life" (Leon Trotsky)
"It is our duty to destroy every religious world-concept... If the destruction of ten million human beings, as happened in the last war, should be necessary for the triumph of one definite class, then that must be done and it will be done." (Yaroslavsky, 1929)
"We do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims. In the struggle to death between two systems we cannot think of anything but the final victory of socialism or its relapse as a consequence of the nuclear victory of imperialist aggression." (Che Guevara, 1962).
“I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left. I’m not afraid of anyone.” (Mao Tse Tung, 1957)
“When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”
- Mao Zedong
“Deaths have benefits. They can fertilise the ground.”
- Mao Zedong
Here's some sayings from the Khmer Rouge:
"To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss."
"You can arrest someone by mistake; never release him by mistake."
"Better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake."
"Better to arrest ten innocent people by mistake than free a single guilty party."
"He who protests is an enemy; he who opposes is a corpse."
Feel free to share. It will probably be quite an interesting history lesson as it is. There is no "easy" way to handle it because of how our beliefs are so intimately connected with our self-worth and our identity, but admitting you are not alone is probably the most humanising place to start. Or as Christians may put it, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".
This thread is in Comparative Religion so members cannot attack one another and are free share what they feel are "bad quotes" from their belief system without being humiliated for it. There is nothing wrong with doing this even if we were to argue that are "corruptions" and "perversions" of the good intentions behind your beliefs. Accepting our fallibility it part of being human and can offer valuable moral lessons about how easily we as human beings are seduced by our pride in the belief in our good intentions at the expense of our conscience.
I prepared this list of Quotes by Communists for another thread but it would seem useful to share it here. Its quite a lot of baggage to try and hide by any standard of the imagination so sharing it is still something of a release even if I am relatively open about its short-comings.
“We will turn our hearts into steel, which we will temper in the fire of suffering and the blood of fighters for freedom. We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. We will let loose the floodgates of that sea. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritsky, Zinovief and Volodarski, let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois - more blood, as much as possible.” (Bolshevik newspaper "Krasnaya Gazeta" 1918)
"The idea of a concentration camp is excellent" (Joseph Stalin)
"We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist notion about the Sanctity of human life" (Leon Trotsky)
"It is our duty to destroy every religious world-concept... If the destruction of ten million human beings, as happened in the last war, should be necessary for the triumph of one definite class, then that must be done and it will be done." (Yaroslavsky, 1929)
"We do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims. In the struggle to death between two systems we cannot think of anything but the final victory of socialism or its relapse as a consequence of the nuclear victory of imperialist aggression." (Che Guevara, 1962).
“I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left. I’m not afraid of anyone.” (Mao Tse Tung, 1957)
“When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”
- Mao Zedong
“Deaths have benefits. They can fertilise the ground.”
- Mao Zedong
Here's some sayings from the Khmer Rouge:
"To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss."
"You can arrest someone by mistake; never release him by mistake."
"Better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake."
"Better to arrest ten innocent people by mistake than free a single guilty party."
"He who protests is an enemy; he who opposes is a corpse."
Feel free to share. It will probably be quite an interesting history lesson as it is. There is no "easy" way to handle it because of how our beliefs are so intimately connected with our self-worth and our identity, but admitting you are not alone is probably the most humanising place to start. Or as Christians may put it, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".
