Skip to main content

speaking with a forked tongue

Playboy: Do you believe in an afterlife?

Redford: I'm not sure I do. I've explored every religion, some very deeply, enough to know there's not one philosophy that can satisfy me. Problems can't be solved with one way of thinking. If anything is my guide, nature is. That's where my spirituality is. I don't believe in organized religion, because I don't believe people should be organized in how they think, in what they believe. That has never been driven home as hard as with the [Bush] administration. When somebody thinks God speaks to him, you've got trouble. If God is speaking to the president, he's speaking with a forked tongue, because the behavior of this administration doesn't seem very godlike or spiritual.. . . Is there an afterlife? As far as I know, this is it. It's all we’ve got. You take your opportunities and you go for it.

—Robert Redford, Playboy Magazine, November 2007

Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

Comments

Popular Post

impulse toward revolt

“Man enjoys the great advantage of having a God endorse the codes he writes; and since man exercises a sovereign authority over woman, it is especially fortunate that this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being. For the Jews, Mohammedans, and the Christians, among others, man is master by divine right; the fear of God, therefore, will repress any impulse toward revolt in the downtrodden female.” Simone de Beauvoir, "Situation and Character," "The Second Sex" (1949, translated and edited by H.M. Parshley, 1953) Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

religious prejudice and superstition

"There is hardly any other sphere in which prejudice and superstition of the most horrific kind have been retained so long as in that of women, and just as it must have been an inexpressible relief for humanity when it shook off the burden of religious prejudice and superstition, I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open before them." Isak Dinesen letter in 1923 to her sister Elle, "Letters From Africa: 1914-1931," ed. Frans Lasson (1981) Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

every existing form

“During the ages, no rebellion has been of like importance with that of Woman against the tyranny of the Church and State; none has had its far reaching effects. We note its beginning; its progress will overthrow every existing form of these institutions; its end will be a regenerated world.” "Woman, Church, and State" by Matilda Joslyn Gage (1893) Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering