There's nothing more important on our spiritual path than developing gentleness to oneself.
While many Islamic countries pay lip service to the idea of freedom of religion, they don't put up with conversion from Islam to another religion.
A culture that gave the world the spiritual creations of the Classical Music of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert, the paintings of Michelangelo, and Raphael, Da Vinci and Rembrandt, does not need lessons from societies whose idea of spirituality is a heaven peopled with female virgins for the use of men, whose idea of heaven resembles a cosmic brothel.
It is the West that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians, recognizing and defending their rights. The notions of freedom and human rights were present at the dawn of Western civilization, as ideals at least, but have gradually come to fruition through supreme acts of self-criticism.
All religions are sick men's dreams, false - demonstrably false - and pernicious.
We cannot hope to win the ideological battle against Islam without criticism of Islam, it is essential that we continue to criticize Islam.
Muslims have not ever been told to examine their faith in a critical way, so the shock is going to be even greater for them, as it is for any child who lives in an over-protected environment, who suddenly has to go out and earn a living and has to stand up on his own feet.
What the devil possessed me to reply 1. . . . e5?? I compltely forgot that Spassky, like Spielmann in the past, very much likes to play the King's Gambit.
Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad.
Do not disregard the accumulation of goodness, saying, 'This will come to nothing. ' By the gradual falling of raindrops, a jar is filled.
The further you run from your sins, the more exhausted you are when they catch up to you.