So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that religion can influence individuals towards immoral actions.
Lucretius highlights a paradoxical aspect of religion, indicating that its power may not always align with moral goodness. Indeed, at times, religious fervor can lead to harmful actions, suggesting that the interpretation and expression of religious beliefs can have both virtuous and malevolent outcomes depending on the context and the individuals involved.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in society, one might use this quote to illustrate the potential darker side of religious influence.
Huts they made then, and fire, and skins for clothing, And a woman yielded to one man in wedlock... ... Common, to see the offspring they had made; The human race began to mellow then. Because of fire their shivering forms no longer Could bear the cold beneath the covering sky.
No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings - the things thus grow Until we know them and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know.
What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.
The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.
Thus the sum of things is ever being reviewed, and mortals dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life.
Many animals even now spring out of the soil, Coalescing from the rains and the heat of the sun. Small wonder, then, if more and bigger creatures, Full-formed, arose from the new young earth and sky. The breed, for instance, of the dappled birds Shucked off their eggshells in the springtime, as Crickets in summer will slip their slight cocoons All by themselves, and search for food and life. Earth gave you, then, the first of mortal kinds, For all the fields were soaked with warmth and moisture.
How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
The environment is everything that isn't me.
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.
When you're Black in the United States, you grudgingly grow accustomed to having people deny that your existence is integral to everything that makes this country what it is.
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