Jesus Christ

I realise that the rest of the world probably knew these already, but since I've been an atheist from a very young age, I never troubled myself with the finer details of the gospels until now. What a strange man:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God ... Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well ... Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you

Matthew, Ch 5

Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice..'

Matthew, Ch 9

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother ... and one's foes will be members of one's own household ... Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it

Matthew, Ch 10

Like I say, funny old chap.

Terry Eagleton

On JC being the Son of God:

Jesus cannot have believed that he was literally the Son of God. Yahweh does not have testicles.

On Jesus the Radical:

Some aspects of the way Jesus is presented in these texts have an obvious radical resonance. He is presented as a homeless, propertyless, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdainful of kinsfolk, without a trade or occupation, a friend of outcasts and pariahs, averse to material possessions, without fear for his own safety, a thorn in the side of the Establishment and a scourge of the rich and powerful. The problem of much modern Christianity has been how to practice this lifestyle with two children, a car and a mortgage.

Foreword to Jesus Christ: The Gospels

To meditate on our being in the world is part of our being in the world

The Meaning of Life 2007:23

Charlie Brooker

On James Murdoch:

James knows a thing or two about horror households: he's the son of Rupert Murdoch, which makes him the closest thing the media has to Damien from The Omen.

That's a fatuous comparison, obviously. Damien Thorn, offspring of Satan, was educated at Yale before inheriting a global business conglomerate at a shockingly young age and using it to hypnotise millions in a demonic bid to hasten Armageddon. James Murdoch's story is quite different. He went to Harvard.

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We are aware of all internet traditions.

On the old Access ads from the 80s:

The greatest comedy pairing since Dastardly and Hitler

On Jeremy Kyle:

His show has only been on air since 2005, but Jeremy Kyle has been with us since the dawn of time

Can I ask you a question? Does Jeremy Kyle get up in the morning, or does he just slither out of a haunted mirror?

Stuart Davis

Stuart 2: Life began when a bolt of lightning struck some protoplasmic soup. You want to make a conscious ommelete? You've gotta break some atmospheric eggs!

Stuart 1: There's an ozone hole the size of a continent!
Stuart 2: Affording fantastic views of the aurora borealis!
Stuart 1: The oceans have become violent! Tsunamis! Hurricanes!
Stuart 2: And surfing has never been more exciting!

Stuart 2: The dodo? A flightless bird? I'm supposed to be bummed out by that? Oh no, what are we going to lose next, a fish that can't swim? Oxymorons should go extinct.

Time Trumpet

Tesco changed their slogan from "Every Little Helps" to, um, "We Control Every Aspect of Your Lives."

Mark Watson

Janet Downey

On Leibniz:

I haven't got past monads yet. They sound like shy secondary genital adornments.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

Karl Marx

On Lincoln

Lincoln is a sui generis figure in the annals of history. He has no initiative, no idealistic impetus, no historical trappings. He gives his most important utterances the most commonplace form. Other people claim to be 'fighting for an idea', when it is a matter for them of fighting for square feet of land. Lincoln, even when he is motivated by an ideal, talks about square feet ... Lincoln is not the product of a popular revolution. This ... average person of good will was placed at the top by the interplay of the forces of universal suffrage unaware of the great issues at stake. The new world has never achieved a greater triumph than by this demonstration that, given its social and political organisation, ordinary people of good will can achieve feats which only the heroes could achieve in the old world.

Karl Marx, Die Presse, 22 August 1862

On Religion
One of my favourite pieces from Marx, taken from Critique of Hegel's Theory of Right. Contains one of his most famous phrases, almost always used out of context...

Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed man's self-consciousness an self-awareness as long as he has not found his feet in the universe. But man is not an abstract being, squatting outside the world. Man is the world of men, the State, and society. This State, this society, produce religion which is an inverted world consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spritual point d'honeur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its general basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human being inasmuch as the human bieng possesses no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly a struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions.

... The immediate task is to unmask human alienation in its secular form, now that it has been unmasked in its sacred form. Thus the criticism of heaven transforms itself into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of laws, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

Tom Paine

Still brilliant more than 200 years later, here's a wonderfully catty remark about Edmund Burke in The Rights of Man:

I know a place in America called Point-no-Point, because as you proceed along the shore, gay and flowery as Mr Burke's language, it continually recedes and presents itself at a distance before you; but when you have got as far as you can go, there is no point at all. Just thus it is with Mr Burke's three hundred and fifty-six pages.

On religion:

With respect to what are called denominations of religion, if every one is left to judge of his own religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge each other's religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and therefore all the world is right, or all the world is wrong.

Network

Network could easily be just quoted from in its entirety, but here's some of my favourite bits:

Howard Beale: This is not some kind of psychotic episode. This is a cleansing moment of clarity.

Max Schumacher (about Diana Christensen): I'm not sure she's capable of any real feelings. She's television generation. She learned life from Bugs Bunny.

Max Shcumacher (to Diana): It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love

.Arthur Jensen: [bellowing] You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU...WILL...ATONE!
Arthur Jensen: [calmly] Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that . . . perfect world . . . in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
Howard Beale: Why me?
Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.
Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.