28 quotes
These men are the kind who would kill their slaves and families rather than let us free them.
Raising the Stones (1990)
Even when people are well-meaning, do not let them fool with your heads.
Raising the Stones (1990)
Sam grew up to be both dutiful and willful, a boy who would say yes to avoid trouble but then do as he pleased.
Raising the Stones (1990)
Her tone conveyed the unimportance of anything that might have happened, anywhere, before she came upon the scene.
Raising the Stones (1990)
A man may not face both ways at once. If he looks back, he cannot look forward.
Raising the Stones (1990)
Let us consider, said Theology Panel: “Is Voorstod a slave state, or is it merely pious?”
Raising the Stones (1990)
We have a saying, we Gharm. A man who claims to carry the truth, carries an empty sack.
Raising the Stones (1990)
“There’s a lot of fathering in those legends,” Sal commented, disapprovingly. “A lot of fathering, a lot of kinging, a lot of death and violence, and very little uncleing and ordinary kindly living.”
Raising the Stones (1990)
It was her way to start each conversation with an apology, so she could be offended when the apology was accepted.
Raising the Stones (1990)
They still begin their services with the first words the prophetess had spoken to them as a teaching. “This I say unto you, be not sexist pigs.”
Raising the Stones (1990)
The prophets trusted no one. Trust had no part in the Cause.
Raising the Stones (1990)
The prophetess had declared it a sin to believe in absolute truths, but the Scrutators claimed that didn’t apply to religious truths, of which they had manufactured a good supply over the centuries.
Raising the Stones (1990)
As with other peoples who had focused their lives upon wrongs in the past and heaven in the future, Voorstod made an everlasting hell of the present.
Raising the Stones (1990)
There is no sin inherent in any mind save the sin of pride in believing one has seen or been taught the absolute truth. The second greatest sin is refusing to search for the truth one must acknowledge one will never absolutely find.
Raising the Stones (1990)
Where other gods might have advocated making life a garden, Voorstod’s God promised the garden only after death, preferably violent death. Then might the faithful lie about on the greensward sucking grapes and fucking virgins, so the prophets promised.
Raising the Stones (1990)
She knew that ancient evils could be left behind. One could choose not to remember. One did not have to dig into the slime pits of old anger and old hate. Forgetting was possible.
Raising the Stones (1990)
Old men’s religions and old men’s legends, always elsewhere, in the dark, so they could not be seen too clearly. So they could not be examined too closely. So they could go on, breeding, fulminating, burning, and rotting in the dark.
Raising the Stones (1990)
Should the escaped Gharm be returned as breakers of contract and apostates, as Voorstod demanded? Or should the Gharm be given sanctuary as common sense and good nature dictated? Where did humanity stop and interference with religion begin?
Raising the Stones (1990)
Elsewhere negotiation might have worked. With other religions, it could have worked. Voorstod’s God, however, was a jealous and vindictive deity who ruled by murder, terrorism, and malediction. How did one negotiate with that?
Raising the Stones (1990)
Though he was very young, only in his early twenties, he had enormous charisma. This attribute alone made him believable in the way that actors and demagogues are believable: he was so overwhelmingly convincing he was never required to demonstrate relevance.
Raising the Stones (1990)