“House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) says his Catholic faith helped shape the Republican budget plan by stressing local control and concern for the poor, according to an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network released Tuesday [April 10, 2012].”
– Deacon Greg Kandra, “Paul Ryan: My Catholic Faith Helped Shape Budget Plan,” The Deacon’s Bench, April 11, 2012.
“Rep. Paul Ryan – the Republican choice to address the nation following the State of the Union and author of the Republican budget – credits Ayn Rand as the reason he got in to politics, and he requires all his staff and interns to read her books.”
– American Values Network, “Ayn Rand & GOP Budget vs. Judeo-Christian Morality”
“[Faith] is a sign of a psychological weakness … I regard it as evil to place your emotions, your desire, above the evidence of what your mind knows. That’s what you’re doing with the idea of God.”
– Ayn Rand, from an interview with Phil Donahue in the 1970s.
“Through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities — through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community — that’s how we advance the common good.”
– Rep. Paul Ryan, quoted in “Christian Debate: Was Jesus For Small Government?” NPR.org, April 16, 2012.
“What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.”
– Ayn Rand, from an interview in Playboy magazine, March 1964.
“Ayn Rand more than anyone else did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism…it is the morality of what is going on right now and how it offends the morality of individuals working toward their own free will that is under attack and it is that that I think Ayn Rand would be commenting on that we need more than ever.”
– Rep. Paul Ryan
Mike Wallace: “You say you don’t like the kind of altruism by which we live. You like a certain kind of Ayn Randist selfishness.”
Ayn Rand: “ ‘Don’t like’ is too weak a word, I consider it evil.”
– From “The Mike Wallace Interview” CBS News, 1959.
“The whole damned history of the world is a story of the struggle between the selfish and the unselfish! … All the bad around us is bred by selfishness. Sometimes selfishness even gets to be a cause, an organized force, even a government. Then it’s called Fascism.”
– Garson Kanin, “Born Yesterday.”
“[Under Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy]: No government except the police, courts of law, and the armed services. No regulation of anything by any government. No Medicare or Medicaid. No Social Security. No public schools. No public hospitals. No public anything, in fact. Just individuals, each looking out for himself, not asking for help or giving help to anyone.”
– Gary Weiss, “The Horrors of an Ayn Rand World: Why We Must Fight for America’s Soul,” AlterNet.org, March 26, 2012.
“I give out Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it.”
– Rep. Paul Ryan. [He gives out “Atlas Shrugged” as Christmas presents? Whew, talk about cognitive dissonance.]
“Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.”
– Matthew 10:21 (KJV)
“It is immoral if it is placed above love of oneself.”
– Ayn Rand, from “The Mike Wallace Interview,” CBS News, 1959.
2012 RS Janes. www.fishink.us
Quotes with a Holiday Punch
“How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few his precepts!
O! ’tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1757.
“Jesus wasn’t a Christian, and he never preached in a church. He was also a drinker, and liked to hang out with sinners. We think of him very highly in the Church of Stop Shopping. We put him right up there with Lenny Bruce.”
– Reverend Billy
“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”
– Lenny Bruce
“To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals.”
– Don Schrader
“Christian fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe-spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.”
– Andrew Lias
“The problem with fundamentalists insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible is that the meaning of words change. A prime example is ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child.’ A rod was a stick used by shepherds to guide their sheep to go in the desired direction. Shepherds did not use it to beat their sheep. The proper translation of the saying is ‘Give your child guidance, or they will go astray.’ It does not mean ‘Beat the sh*t out of your child or he will become rotten’ as many fundamentalist parents seem to believe.”
– Author Unknown
“I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ ‘No,’ said the priest, ‘not if you did not know.’ ‘Then why,’ asked the Eskimo earnestly, ‘did you tell me?’”
– Annie Dillard
“Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish.”
– Author Unknown
“Christianity is not a religion; it’s an industry.”
– Author Unknown
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
– Anne Lamott
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