Quotes by Secular Society We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society. Alain de Botton secular-society struggle letting-go We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it). Alain de Botton secular-society museums ideas According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow. Alain de Botton secular-society fate thinking The demand that Islam makes of women is to not attract attention to yourself, and if you are in a secular society, that attire does exactly that, and it is a political symbol, no longer religious. Ayaan Hirsi Ali secular-society political religious With the time, yes we can be worried, because the secular state should reflect secular society, and this secular society, with the time, if you don't get rid of those terrorists and these extremists and the Wahabi style, of course it will influence at least the new and the coming generations. Bashar al-Assad yes-we-can secular-society style Where are the vehicles to character development in secular society? Dennis Prager secular-society development character The public school has become the established church of secular society. Ivan Illich secular-society education school Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. James Madison secular-society law exercise Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect. James Madison secular-society atheist religious Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past. Jonathan Sacks secular-society government past Within the field of a secular society, which is a sort of neutral frame that allows individuals to develop their own lives, so long as they don't annoy their neighbors too much, each of us has an individual myth that's driving us, which we may or may not know. Joseph Campbell secular-society may long Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage. Karen Armstrong secular-society different way If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern! Mahatma Gandhi secular-society communication spiritual A church has the right to set its own standards within its community. I don't think it has a right to prohibit birth control or to enforce upon a secular society its conception of divorce and the indissolubility of the marriage tie. Reinhold Niebuhr secular-society divorce thinking If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature - the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society - it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what's there. Susan Sontag secular-society tasks art Religions are all alike- founded upon fables and mythologies. Thomas Jefferson secular-society atheist religious n our increasingly secular society, with so many disparate gods and different faiths, superhero films present a unique canvas upon which our shared hopes, dreams and apocalyptic nightmares can be projected and played out. Tom Hiddleston secular-society unique dream The basic assumption of the secular society is that modernity overcomes religion. Ulrich Beck secular-society assumption overcoming