J  •
K-Ken  •
Kep-Ku  •

L-Lec

•  Lee-Ley
•  Li-Lu
•  M-Mao

Suzanne LaFollette (1893-1983)
American Editor

There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained.
-- Suzanne Lafollette, Concerning Women, "The Beginnings of Emancipation" (1926), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word "human."
-- Suzanne Lafollette, Concerning Women, "The Beginnings of Emancipation" (1926), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.
-- Suzanne Lafollette, quoted from Creative Quotations

Selma Ottiliana Lovisa Lagerlöf (1858-1930)
Swedish novelist, poet; Nobel Prize winner

Here [in Jerusalem], no mercy is shown. One hates one's fellow man to the glory of God.
-- Selma Lagerlöf, Jerusalem (1901), quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Corliss Lamont (1902-1995)
Humanist; human rights advocate, winner of the Gandhi Peace Award

To define twentieth-century humanism briefly, I would say that it is a philosophy of joyous service for the greater good of all humanity in this natural world and advocating the methods of reason, science, and democracy.
-- Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism (1988)

Supernatural entities simply do not exist. This nonreality of the supernatural means, on the human level, that men do not possess supernatural and immortal souls; and, on the level of the universe as a whole, that our cosmos does not possess a supernatural and eternal God.
-- Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism (1988), p. 116, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

God, once imagined to be an omnipresent force throughout the whole world of nature and man. has been increasingly tending to seem omniabsent. Everywhere, intelligent and educated people rely more and more on purely secular and scientific techniques for the solution of their problems. As science advances, belief in divine miracles and the efficacy of prayer becomes fainter and fainter.
-- Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism (1988), p. 129, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
English poet and writer

Even the weakest disputant is made so conceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than the wisest who thinks differently from him.
-- Walter Savage Landor, Melanchthon and Calvin, Imaginary Conversations (1824-29), quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.
-- Walter Savage Landor, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.
-- Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations, "Martin and Jack" (1824-9), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
-- Walter Savage Landor, Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher

Robert E Lane
American sociologist, political scientist, economist, educator

[An ideology can be defined as a] group of beliefs that individuals borrow; most people borrow an ideology by identifying with a social group ... [with] a body of sacred documents and heroes.
-- Robert E Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does (1962), quoted from the senior thesis of Stephen S Strohminger, "Region versus Ideology: Which Has The Most Influence" (University of South Carolina, Aiken: Spring 1998)

Stereotypes are the mind’s shorthand for dealing with complexities. They have two aspects: they are much blunter than reality; they are shaped to fit a man’s preferences or prejudgments. Thus two principles are involved: differentiation or its lack, and biased preferential perception.
-- Robert E Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does (1962), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief"

Changing ideas is a strain not to be lightly incurred, particularly when these ideas are intimately related to one’s self-esteem ... men have elaborated an explanation for their situation in life.... Their rationales are endowed with moral qualities.
-- Robert E Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does (1962), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief"

Dr. James Langer (b. 1934)
Theoretical physicist on the faculty of the Physics Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara, heading up the Institute for Theoretical Physics; vice president of the National Academy of Sciences

It just absolutely boggles the mind. I wouldn't want my doctor thinking that intelligent design was an equally plausible hypothesis to evolution any more than I would want my airplane pilot believing in the flat Earth.
-- Dr. James Langer, stating emphatically that a strong belief in evolution as opposed to "Intelligent Design" is vital to good science — even family practice medicine, where belief in ID is often tolerated, quoted in William J Broad and James Glanz, "Does Science Matter?" (The New York Times: November 11, 2003)

Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827)
French astronomer and mathematician

The telescope sweeps the skies without finding God.
-- Pierre Laplace, from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

I have no need of that hypothesis.
-- Pierre Laplace, having been asked by Napoleon why he had made no mention of "God" in his book about the universe, Mécanique céleste (Celestial Mechanics), quoted in E T Bell, Men of Mathematics (1937), quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations (1999)

Harold Dwight Lasswell (1902-1978)
American educator, political scientist

Dogma is a defensive reaction against doubt in the mind of the theorist, but doubt of which he is unaware.
-- Harold D Lasswell, Psychopathology And Politics (1930), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief"

The essential mark of the agitator is the high value he places on the emotional response of the public. Whether he attacks or defends social institutions is a secondary matter.
-- Harold D Lasswell, Psychopathology And Politics (1930), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief"

Larry Laudan
Philosopher of Science; Senior Investigator, Instituto de las Investigaciones Filosóficas, National Autonomous University of Mexico

At various key points in the Opinion, Creationism is charged with being untestable, dogmatic (and thus non-tentative), and unfalsifiable. All three charges are of dubious merit. For instance, to make the interlinked claims that Creationism is neither falsifiable nor testable is to assert that Creationism makes no empirical assertions whatever. This is surely false. Creationists make a wide range of testable assertions about empirical matters of fact. Thus, as Judge Overton himself grants (apparently without seeing its implications), the creationists say that the earth is of very recent origin (say 6,000 to 20,000 years old); they argue that most of the geological features of the earth's surface are diluvial in character (i.e., products of the postulated worldwide Noachian deluge); they are committed to a large number of factual historical claims with which the Old Testament is replete; they assert the limited variability of species. They are committed to the view that, since animals and man were created at the same time, the human fossil record must be paleontologically co-extensive with the record of lower animals. It is fair to say that no one has shown how to reconcile such claims with the available evidence -- evidence which speaks persuasively to a long earth history, among other things.
     In brief, these claims are testable, they have been tested, and they have failed those tests.
-- Larry Laudan, echoing the angle emphasized by Vic Stenger in his 2001 book, Has Science Found God? that many claims of the supernatural are testable, they simply fail empirical testing! and referring to the famous McLean v. Arkansas trial concerning Fundamentalist Christian Creationism being taught as science in public schools, in "Science at the Bar: Causes for Concern" (Science, Technology and Human Values 7, no. 41, 1982), pages. 16-19, quoted from Michael Ruse, editor, But Is It Science? pp. 351-5

The soundness of creation-science can and must be separated from all questions about the dogmatism of creationists. Once we make that rudimentary separation, we discover both (a) that creation-science is testable and falsifiable, and (b) that creation-science has been tested and falsified -- insofar as any theory can be said to be falsified. But, as I pointed out in the earlier essay, that damning indictment cannot be drawn so long as we confuse Creationism and creationists to such an extent that we take the creationists' mental intransigence to entail the immunity of creationist theory from empirical confrontation.
-- Larry Laudan, from "More on Creationism" (Science, Technology and Human Values 8, Number. 42 1983), pages. 36-38, quoted from Michael Ruse, editor, But Is It Science? pages. 351-5

[Excerpt]
The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.
-- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism: Dialogues on the Philosophy of Science (1990), p. x.

[Passage]
I did not write this work merely with the aim of setting the exegetical record straight. My larger target is those contemporaries who -- in repeated acts of wish-fulfillment -- have appropriated conclusions from the philosophy of science and put them to work in aid of a variety of social cum political causes for which those conclusions are ill adapted. Feminists, religious apologists (including "creation scientists"), counterculturalists, neoconservatives, and a host of other curious fellow-travelers have claimed to find crucial grist for their mills in, for instance, the avowed incommensurability and underdetermination of scientific theories. The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.
-- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism: Dialogues on the Philosophy of Science (1990), p. x., quoted from Alan D Sokal, "What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove" (April 8, 1997), slated to appear in Noretta Koertge, editor, A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science (1998)

[En Españól]
El desalojamiento de la idea de la importancia de los hechos y las evidencias por la idea de que todo es reductible a perspectivas e intereses subjetivos es -- secundario sólamente en las campañas políticas estadounidenses -- la más prominente y perniciosa manifestación de anti-intelectualismo de nuestro tiempo.
-- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism (1990)

[In Finnish]
Ajatus, että faktat ja todistusaineisto ovat merkittävässä asemassa, on väistynyt sen ajatuksen tieltä, että kaikki palautuu subjektiivisiin intresseihin ja näkökulmiin. Tämä on -- heti amerikkalaisten poliittisten kampanjoiden jälkeen -- aikamme epä-älyllisyyden näkyvin ja tuhoisin ilmaus.
-- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism (1990)

Anton Szandor LaVey (1930-1997?)
Lion tamer, carnival side-show huckster; founder: of Chruch of Satan

On Saturday night, I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scoured by any white-light religion.
-- Anton LaVey, Introduction to The Satanic Bible

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930)
British author

God is only a great imaginative experience.
-- D H Lawrence, "Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter," in London Mercury (July 1930, repr. in Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D H Lawrence, pt. 4, ed. by E McDonald, 1936), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

I know the greatness of Christianity; it is a past greatness.... I live in 1924, and the Christian venture is done.
-- D H Lawrence, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D H Lawrence, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

I cannot be a materialist -- but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery -- such suffering, such dreadful suffering -- and shall the short years of Christ's mission atone for it all?
-- D H Lawrence, letter, 3 Dec. 1907 (published in The Letters of D H Lawrence, vol. 1, ed. by James T Boulton, 1979), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Sing then the core of dark and absolute oblivion where the soul at last is lost in utter peace.
-- D H Lawrence, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labour, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.
-- D H Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ch. 8 (1924), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.
-- D H Lawrence, Etruscan Places, ch. 2 (1932), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.
-- D H Lawrence: the woodkeeper Annable's motto, in The White Peacock, pt. 2, ch. 2 (1911), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

The modern pantheist not only sees the god in everything, he takes photographs of it.
-- D H Lawrence, St Mawr (1925), quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations (1999)

Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.
-- D H Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ch. 1 (1924). Lawrence added: "Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing." Quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations.

Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.
-- D H Lawrence, "Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter," in London Mercury (July 1930), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

We need not feel ashamed of flirting with the zodiac. The zodiac is well worth flirting with.
-- D H Lawrence, "Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter," in London Mercury (July 1930). Lawrence's approval of astrology excluded "the rather silly modern way of horoscopy and telling your fortune by the stars." His interest lay in the study of the stars as myth and metaphor. Quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations.

A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.
-- D H Lawrence, letter, 3 Dec. 1907 (published in The Letters of D H Lawrence, vol. 1, 1979). Lawrence added, "So I contend that true Socialism is religion; that honest, fervent politics are religion; that whatever a man will labour for earnestly and in some measure unselfishly is religion." Quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations.

All vital truth contains the memory of all that for which it is not true.
-- D H Lawrence, letter, 20 Dec. 1914 (published in The Letters of D H Lawrence, vol. 2, 1981), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Oh build your ship of death, oh build it!
     For you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.
-- D H Lawrence, "The Ship of Death"

Jacob Lawrence
American law scholar, University of Texas Law School

"Humanism" is to be human, to think, to analyze, and to probe. To respond and to be stimulated by all living things -- beasts, fowl, and fishes. To respond through touch, sight, smell, and sound to all things in nature -- both organic and inorganic-to colors, shapes, and textures -- to not only look at a blade of grass but to really see a blade of grass. These things, to me, are what life and living are all about. I would call it "Humanism."
-- Jacob Lawrence, in a letter to Warren Allen Smith, quoted from Smith's Who's Who In Hell

H Douglas Laycock
American law scholar, University of Texas Law School

If you're doubtful about the existence of God, you are of doubtful loyalty to the nation.
-- Douglas Laycock, discussing the meaning of the message sent by the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance; Laycock represents 32 clergy who oppose the pledge as it now reads (Austin American-Statesman: March 28, 2004)

One lesson of religious persecutions is that the Free Exercise Clause must protect religiously motivated conduct, as well as belief and speech. Conscientious objectors to government policy are willing to suffer greatly rather than violate their conscience; attempts to coerce religious conscience lead inevitably to persecution.
-- Douglas Laycock, "Original Intent," from The First Freedom: Religion and the Bill of Rights, Ed. by James E Wood, Jr., J M Dawson, Institute of Church-State Studies, 1990, p. 106, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (b. 1944)
Kenyan conservationist and fossil hunter whose discoveries have contributed immensely to the study of human evolution

Unquestionably mankind is special, and in many ways, too.... There is now a critical need for a deep awareness that, no matter how special we are as an animal, we are still part of the greater balance of nature.... During that relatively brief span evolutionary pressures forged a brain capable of profound understanding of matters animate and inanimate: the fruits of intellectual and technological endeavour in this latter quarter of the 20th century give us just an inkling of what the human mind can achieve. The potential is enormous, almost infinite. We can, if we so choose, do virtually anything.
-- Richard Leakey, Origins (1977), p. 256

The whole story is about change. We are very lucky that the earth's history is recorded in fossilized remains. And we can see the changes. Unfortunately, there will always be gaps in our knowledge, but there is no doubt that we and everything living today has evolved.
-- Richard Leakey, in an online interview: "TIME 100 Scientist & Thinker: Dr. Richard Leakey, Head of the Kenya Wildlife Service," America Online Transcript (April 11, 1999)

I have been raised to believe in freedom of thought and speech. If a minority wishes to accept that position it's their right. What I fear is that this minority may seem to be larger than it truly is. What is strange is that there are still people who believe the world is not a globe.
-- Richard Leakey, on being asked about groups in the US that deny evolution in favor of the biblical creation story, in an online interview: "TIME 100 Scientist & Thinker: Dr. Richard Leakey, Head of the Kenya Wildlife Service," America Online Transcript (April 11, 1999)

I ... believe the study of human history remains important and should not be banned. We should ensure that any archaeological studies are conducted with sensitivity and respect. Reburying relics, in my view, does not help anyone go anywhere.
-- Richard Leakey, regarding the Kenniwick Man found in the Columbia Basin in Washington State, which AmerIndians wanted to be reburied for ritualistic purposes rather than allowing the remains to be studied, in an online interview: "TIME 100 Scientist & Thinker: Dr. Richard Leakey, Head of the Kenya Wildlife Service," America Online Transcript (April 11, 1999)

The greatest problem we face is the growing number of people living in poverty. The related sense of hopelessness has to be impacting on every part of environmental management.
-- Richard Leakey, on being asked what Kenya's most pressing environmental problem is, in an online interview: "TIME 100 Scientist & Thinker: Dr. Richard Leakey, Head of the Kenya Wildlife Service," America Online Transcript (April 11, 1999)

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (1909-1966)
Polish satiriker, poet, aphorist (pronounced 'Lets')

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Do not make gods in your own images.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

There are parodies of non-existent things.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Do I have no soul as punishment for not believing in the soul?
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Sometimes the devil tempts me to believe in God.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

You can change your faith without changing gods. And vice versa.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

In the beginning there was the Word -- at the end just the Cliché.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Every bush can burn if you fire it with your imagination.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

What do I believe? I believe in God, if he exists.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Do I believe? God only knows.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

There is a dispute about the existence of God. Both sides try to hide that they killed Him -- even before He came into being.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

All Gods were immortal.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

The spirit of the times can haunt even the atheists.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

An error becomes an error when born as truth.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Puritans should wear fig leaves on their eyes.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Let him who is without guilt cast the first stone. A trap. Because then he will be no longer without guilt.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Witches admitted their relations with the devil. Our blood boils -- how could they be forced to admit this when there is no devil. But reason tells us this is not true. The devil does exist and was in fact the inquisitor.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

How many prison years in the years since Christ!
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

To god what is God's, to Caesar what is Caesar's. To humans -- what?
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Many who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lamppost.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

The face of the enemy frightens me only when I see how much it resembles mine.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

You cannot play the Song of Freedom on an instrument of oppression.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

Value your words. Each one may be the last.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

"Oh to be old again," said a young corpse.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

The consumer's side of the coffin lid isn't showy.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962, from a translation by Jacek Galazka)

The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him.
-- Stanislaw J Lec, Unkempt Thoughts (1962)

William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903)
Irish historian who wrote Rationalism in Europe (1865) and Democracy and Liberty (1896)

• Check our Big List of W E H Lecky Quotations

When it began, Christianity was regarded as a system entirely beyond the range and scope of human reason; it was impious to question; it was impious to examine; it was impious to discriminate. On the other hand, it was visibly instinct with the supernatural. Miracles of every order and degree of magnitude were flashing forth incessantly from all its parts.
-- W E H Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, (1866), from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

The doctrine of a material hell in its effect was to chill and deaden the sympathies, predispose men to inflict suffering, and to retard the march of civilization.
-- W E H Lecky, quoted in Clampett, Luther Burbank: Our Beloved Infidel, p. 102, from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

When the Church obtained the direction of the civil power, she soon modified or abandoned the tolerant maxims she had formerly inculcated; and, in the course of a few years, restrictive laws were enacted, both against the Jews and against the heretics.
-- W E H Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (Revised Ed. NY, 1878) Volume I, p. 50

Whenever the clergy were at the elbow of the civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant, persecution was the result.
-- W E H Lecky, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

All history shows that, in exact proportion as nations advance in civilisation, the accounts of miracles taking place among them become rarer and rarer, until at last they entirely cease.
-- W E H Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (Revised Ed. NY, 1878) Volume I, p. 161

Fierce invectives against women form a conspicuous and grotesque portion of the writings of the Church fathers.
-- W E H Lecky, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

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