Life/Death/Power

“Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it.”

 

— N. T. Wright, British theologian

 

“We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us.”

 

— Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaida leader and terrorist

 

“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”

 

— Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British atheistic philosopher

 

*“The only thing worse than dying is living a boring life.”

 

— Seattle Pastor Mark Driscoll

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

 

— Voltaire (1694-1778), French atheistic philosopher

 

“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

 

— Lord Acton (1834-1902), British scholar and historian

 

“The evidence for the Resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion.”

 

— Anthony Flew, skeptic British philosopher in Philosophia Christi

 

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”

 

— Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), First Lady

 

“Don’t be afraid that your life will end. Be afraid that it will never begin.”

 

— Grace Hansen, American dance director (1913-)

 

“Real life does not come naturally. It is counterintuitive. It is a skill we have to learn. That’s because the way to real life is not something we get, but something we give.“

 

— J. P. Moreland, philosopher, in The Lost Virtue of Happiness (2006)

 

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: ‘Wow! What a ride!’”

 

– Robert Wickman, businessman

 

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

 

— Martin Luther King Jr., (1929-1968), American civil rights leader

 

“You can kill us, but you cannot do us any real harm.”

 

— Justin Martyr (100-165), martyred in Rome

 

“In practice, communism is nothing less than sheer barbarism that makes even the horrors of Nazism pale in comparison. Professor Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii outlines that barbarism in his book Death by Government, a comprehensive detailing of the roughly 170 million people murdered by their own governments during the 20th Century. From 1917 to its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union murdered about 62 million of its own people. During Mao Zedong’s reign, 35,236,000, possibly more, Chinese citizens were murdered. By comparison, Hitler’s Nazis managed to murder 21 million of its citizens and citizens in nations they conquered. Adding these numbers to the 60 million lives lost in war makes the 20th Century mankind’s most brutal era…. The very attempt to achieve the utopian goals of communism requires the ruthless suppression of the individual and an attack on any institution that might compromise the loyalty of the individual to the state. That’s why one of the first orders of business for communism, and those who support its ideas, is the attack on religion and the family.”

 

— Walter Williams, “The [Colorado Springs] Gazette”, 8/16/06, p. M6 (reprinted in The American Christian College Journal, 11/06, p. 6)