Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had ‘given’ their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had...

All spiritual journeys are martyrdoms

We can always be sure of one thing—that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. This is not a...

You are to make up your mind whether it is to be God or man. Whether you are to be free or a slave. Whether it is to be progress or stagnation.As long as man...

Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology has been denounced as the enemy of religion. The twin sisters of terrestrial and celestial physics have thus been joint-heirs of...

We are humans, they say we are mortals. Though we do live once but can last forever.

You’re mad, you missionaries,’ ejaculated Tai Haruru angrily. ‘What good do you think you do, crawling out to the extremities of all the different world’s ends and dying there like lizards spiked on sticks?’Brother Balaam...

We don’t know why God chose to deliver Peter from death and James through death. The text doesn’t say.

The pages of history are red with the blood of illuminated “saints” who were murdered by their religions for actually achieving the advertised spiritual rewards.

Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,Sharp Roman road to Paradise,Come eat me up, I’ll pay thy tollWith all my flesh, and keep my soul.

{Wells discussing his experiences with Christianity}I realised as if for the first time, the menace of these queer shaven men in lace and petticoats who had been intoning, responding, and going through ritual gestures at...

Take away the contests of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns.

The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in...

The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs… In fact, the Athanasian paradox that...

In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs.

As More says, it hardly makes a man a hero, to agree to stand and burn once he is chained to a stake. I have written books and I cannot unwrite them. I cannot unbelieve...

If you want to be a good parent then be a great leader. You should live a life with passion for someone and something. The legacy you leave your children shouldn’t be how you suffered...

Rizal learned the right ideas at the wrong time, and for this he was shot.

As Luxenberg’s work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do...

It’s an insidious idea, this notion that there is life after death. The promise of a reward in the afterlife has been used as an excuse to deny help to the poor, helpless and oppressed;...

Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.

The faithful clamoured to be buried alongside the martyrs, as close as possible to the venerable remains, a custom which, in anthropological terms, recalls Neolithic beliefs that certain human remains possessed supernatural properties. It was...

I could have been 23 next July I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.