My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
People have murdered each other, in massive wars and guerilla actions, for many centuries, and still murder each other in the present, over Ideologies and Religions which, stated as propositions, appear neither true nor false to modern logicians- meaningless propositions that look meaningful to the linguistically naive.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights how people often engage in violence over ideologies and religions that may lack logical truth.
Robert Anton Wilson's quote criticizes the historical and ongoing violence that arises from deeply held beliefs in ideologies and religions. He points out that these beliefs, when examined through a logical lens, may not hold objective truth, yet they continue to incite conflict and division among people. This suggests a disconnect between the subjective significance of these beliefs and their rational validity, emphasizing the dangers of dogmatism and the need for critical thinking.
Themes
ViolenceIdeologyBeliefReligionConflictTruthDogma
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared in a discussion on how conflicts arise from differing belief systems.
More from Robert Anton Wilson
All quotes →There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
Robert Anton WilsonRead
Similar quotes
We're left with so little to go on. Only the present is full enough to seem complete, and even that is an optical illusion. The moment is bleeding off the page. We live on the precipice of our perceptions. At the edge of every living instant, the world shears away like a cliff of ice into the sea of what is forgotten.
Ivan VladislavicRead
I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
Abraham LincolnRead
My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules.
Harold RamisRead
Even the laws of justice themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice.
Ambrose BierceRead
Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.
Charles Caleb ColtonRead
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
William ShakespeareRead