Deference Quotes - page 3

You are better than your god. You are better than your religion. So am I, so is damn near everybody on the planet. I wish you people would wake up and see this. Stop apologizing for this! [holds up The Bible] It's not the Good Book, there's nothing good about it. All it does is poison minds. All it does is make you sacrifice your humanity- the only thing that you have that is of any value- in order to sit around in deference to your gods. (Matt Dillahunty)
If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope, the wish to belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes; and as the book tries to show, some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on freedom and reason. Their influence, too rarely challenged, continues to mislead those on whose defence civilization depends, and to divide them. The responsibility of this tragic and possibly fatal division becomes ours if we hesitate to be outspoken in our criticism of what admittedly is a part of our intellectual heritage. By reluctance to criticize some of it, we may help to destroy it all. View quote
Karl Popper