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Any ethics that needs religion is bad ethics, and any religion that tries to do so is bad religion. Of course, there are plenty of both around.

— Susan Neiman Beyond Belief conference (2006)

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More quotes by Susan Neiman

Those who cannot find [moral clarity] are likely to settle for the far more dangerous simplicity, or purity, instead.

Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (2008)

How do we remember the parts of our histories we'd rather forget? Repression and revision are always options.

I’m delighted to hear someone make the claim that there is moral progress because it can be such a incendiary thing to say, and its something that I say and deeply believe in.

Beyond Belief conference (2006)

What concerns me most here are the ways in which contemporary voices considered to be leftist have abandoned the philosophical ideas that are central to any left-wing standpoint: a commitment to universalism over tribalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress.

Left Is Not Woke (2023)

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Susan Neiman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.