Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

[Non-Catholic Christians are] in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the [Roman Catholic] church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.
-- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in a statement issued jointly with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Pope John Paul II, quoted from Martin E Marty, "Mother church scolds the family," MSNBC September 6, 2000

Raymond of Aguilers
Chronicler of the Christian Crusaders' 1099 massacre of Jerusalem

Wonderful things were to be seen. Numbers of the Saracens [Muslims] were beheaded ... Others were shot with arrows, or forced to jump from the towers; others were tortured for several days, then burned with flames. In the streets were seen piles of heads and hands and feet. One rode about everywhere amid the corpses of men and horses. In the temple of Solomon, the horses waded in the blood up to their knees, nay, up to the bridle. It was a just and marvelous judgement of God, that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers.
-- Raymond of Aguilers, describing the scene when a band of Crusaders massacred both Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem in 1099, in James A Haught, Holy Horrors (1990), quoted from Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History, critical editing by Cliff Walker

Ronald Wilson Reagan The 40th President of the United States

The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect.
-- Ronald Reagan, at an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Dallas on August 23, 1984, in "Quotable: Where Reagan and Religion Intersect" (Dallas Morning News: June 11, 2004)

The most sublime picture in American history is of George Washington on his knees in the snow at Valley Forge. That image personifies a people who know that it's not enough to depend on our own courage and goodness; we must also seek help from God, our father and preserver.
-- Ronald Reagan, commenting on a painting that is well-known to be a work of fiction, on the National Day of Prayer, May 6, 1982, to be fair, Bill Clinton made an almost identical remark during a Thanksgiving Day address, in "Quotable: Where Reagan and Religion Intersect" (Dallas Morning News: June 11, 2004)

God, the source of all knowledge, should never have been expelled from our children's classrooms.
-- Ronald Reagan, address, National Religious Broadcasters, Washington, DC (January, 1984), quoted from Menendez and Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Well, it's a theory, it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed. But if it was going to be taught in the schools, then I think that also the biblical theory of creation, which is not a theory, but the biblical story of creation, should also be taught.
-- Ronald Reagan, during a press conference as US presidential candidate (1980), having been asked if he thought the theory of evolution should be taught in the public schools, in Science (1980, 209:1214), quoted from Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, Chapter 5

I am told that tens of thousands of prayer meetings are being held on this day; for that I am deeply grateful. We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each inaugural day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer.
-- Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address (January 20, 1981), in "Quotable: Where Reagan and Religion Intersect" (Dallas Morning News: June 11, 2004)

For the first time ever, everything is in place for the Battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.
-- Ronald Reagan, to James Mills regarding events in Libya (1971), quoted from "A Brief History of the Apocalypse"

We may be the generation that sees Armageddon.
-- Ronald Reagan, in an interview with criminal televangelist Jim Bakker (1980), quoted from "A Brief History of the Apocalypse"

"The first man in twenty years to make the Presidency a part-time job, a means of filling up a few of the otherwise blank days of retirement."
-- Simon Hoggart, British journalist, quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Insulting Quotations

"A triumph of the embalmer's art."
-- Gore Vidal, US writer, quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Insulting Quotations

It's like guerrilla warfare. If you reveal your location, all it does is allow your opponent to improve his artillery bearings. It's better to move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night. You've got two choices: You can wear cammies and shimmy along on your belly, or you can put on a red coat and stand up for everyone to see. It comes down to whether you want to be the British army in the Revolutionary War or the Viet Cong. History tells us which tactic was more effective.
-- Ralph Reed, Los Angeles Times (March 22, 1992), admitting that he wants to deceive us regarding his true aims

I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night.
-- Ralph Reed, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (November 9, 1991)

The Christian Coalition's Agenda

We should resist the temptation to identify our religious convictions with the platform of a party or the platitudes of favored politicians.
-- Ralph Reed, lying to the public about the Christian Coalition's agenda (1996)
 

Pat Robertson Disagrees:

"We want ... as soon as possible to see a majority of the Republican Party in the hands of pro-family Christians by 1996."
-- Pat Robertson, Denver Post (October 26, 1992)

"You know, I'm a convention, at the Republican convention I'm a delegate from VA. So is Ralph Reed. We're both delegates elected by our state to come to this convention. And, uh, we have another 450 Christian Coalition members. Uh, so to say that we're non-partisan is a little ingenuous. I mean, obviously we're partisan. The Christian Coalition's voter guides, on the other hand, are non-partisan. The money that is spent in an election cycle is a non-partisan, uh, effort. But I think under the various laws, the FEC rules, and so forth, it is perfectly all right to advocate candidates who support your positions on key issues, be they abortion, or family tax credits, or whatever. The Supreme Court has said that's part of our First Amendment freedom. So I, I, I don't deny that we have that right. But so far we have been more or less non-partisan, but I think rather clearly Republican."
-- Pat Robertson, c.c.watch release (August 15, 1996), "Coalition Is Partisan, Says That Advocating Candidates Is All Right"

Justice William Rehnquist
Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court

The "wall of separation between church and state" is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.
-- William Rehnquist, Dissenting Opinion in Wallace v. Jaffree (1985)

Janet Reno 
American Attorney General under Bill Clinton

Janet Reno Did Not Say This:

     • Load This Section With Frames Index

"A cultist is one who has a strong belief in the Bible and the Second Coming of Christ; who frequently attends Bible studies; who has a high level of financial giving to Christian causes; who home schools his children; who has accumulated survival foods and has a strong belief in the Second Amendment; and who distrusts big government."
-- Phony Quote, per Urban Legends Reference

Mayor Carolyn Risher
Mayor of the small Florida town of Inglis

Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just, is not now, nor ever again will be, a part of this town of Inglis.
-- Mayor Carolyn Risher, in a proclamation issued on official town stationery,

Eugene Rivers
Founder of the Ten Point Coalition and pastor of the Azusa Christian Community in Dorchester, Massachusetts

[Funding for faith-based charities should] be judged based on performance and results -- not religion. Now, if our sin is that our religion can produce the results, then we plead guilty.
-- Eugene Rivers, using the "it works" angle to advocate that his church be allowed to grab taxpayers' money to fund his religion-based rehabilitation programs, rather than those thinly veiled evangelistic efforts being supported exclusively by those who agree with those views being taught during rehabilitation, quoted in Kenny Byrd, "Bush unveils faith-based initiative; critics raise church-state questions," issued by the Baptist Joint Committee (early 2001)

Let me be very blunt: the heterosexual transmission of AIDS is, in Africa, a function of truly pathological promiscuity. So this is really a violence issue -- not the same violence we deal with in Boston, where teenagers stab and shoot each other, but the violence of African men who are killing themselves, and killing African women and children, with pathological promiscuity.
-- Eugene Rivers, in an interview with Eva Thorne in the Boston Review, an interview about HIV in Africa which never once mentioned the word condom, but rather the mission of American churches to advocate the tightening of laws regarding sexuality in African countries

And we can't discharge that moral responsibility by passing out contraceptives. Contraceptives have been circulating all over Uganda, and it is not clear how many people are using the things. The best contraceptive in this case is abstinence.
-- Eugene Rivers, in an interview with Eva Thorne in the Boston Review

Lucius Mendel Rivers (1905-1970)
US Representative, South Carolina

The Court has now officially stated its disbelief in God Almighty.
-- Mendel Rivers, in response to the US Supreme Court's verdict in Engle v Vitale (barring school-sponsored prayer), quoted from Robert E Nordlander, "Madalyn Murray O'Hair: The Making of a Modern Myth" (Freethought Today, November, 1988)

The Rev Ted Roberts
Oregon Foursquare preacher who, in his 60s, finally outgrew the masturbation habit and now thinks he knows how to solve, in others, what isn't even a problem for most people

It's my experience that in any church, from 60 to 70 percent of men are losing the battle for purity.
-- The Rev Ted Roberts. Uhh, Pastor? Those are dismal numbers! We may as well start seeing this as normal behavor if that many people are doing it! Either way, this doesn't say much for the Christian religion's (the Christian God's) ability either to make men moral or to inspire men to want to become moral! Quoted from an interview sidebar in Nancy Haught, "An Evangelist's 'Pure Desire': Ted Roberts saw sexual addiction everywhere, even in himsef, and vowed to make confronting it his mission"; excerpted by PAM from The (Portland) Oregonian (September 1, 2007).

!

     • Check our Big Scary List of Pat Robertson Quotations

We have enough votes to run the country. And when the people say, "We've had enough," we are going to take over.
-- Pat Robertson, speech given to the April, 1980 "Washington for Jesus" rally

There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore.
-- Pat Robertson, address to his American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), November, 1993.

When I said during my presidential bid that I would only bring Christians and Jews into the government, I hit a firestorm. "What do you mean?" the media challenged me. "You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe in the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?" My simple answer is, "Yes, they are."
-- Pat Robertson, The New World Order, p. 218

You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them.
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, January 14, 1991

The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening.
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, December 30, 1981

[Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism -- everything that the Bible condemns.
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, April 9, 1991

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.
-- Pat Robertson, fundraising letter, 1992

The Islamic people, the Arabs, were the ones who captured Africans, put them in slavery, and sent them to America as slaves. Why would the people in America want to embrace the religion of slavers.
-- Pat Robertson, quoted from the American Muslim Council press release, "Statement regarding anti-Muslim comments made by Pat Robertson on October 27,1997" and elsewhere. (Read Robertson's entire anti-Muslim segment.)

The wars of extermination have given a lot of people trouble unless they understand fully what was going on. The people in the land of Palestine were very wicked. They were given over to idolatry. They sacrificed their children. They had all kinds of abominable sex practices. They were having sex apparently with animals. They were having sex men with men and women with women. They were committing adultery and fornication. They were serving idols. As I say, they were offering their children up, and they were forsaking God. God told the Israelites to kill them all: men, women and children; to destroy them."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, May 6, 1985, justifying (and in fact celebrating) the wholesale genocide allegedly committed by the early invading Israelites. (Read Robertson's entire segment celebrating biblical genocide.)

Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the Evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.
-- Pat Robertson, interview with Molly Ivins, 1993. Yeah, right! Robertson here sounds remarkably like a certain political leader of yore who once bemoaned that "the Jews" were oppreseing his Aryan people.

Henry “Junior” Rodriguez
President of the Saint Bernard, Louisiana, Parish

They can kiss my ass.
-- Henry “Junior” Rodriguez, responding to objections over his proposed Christian-cross-shaped Hurricane Katrina memorial, allegedly slated to bear a likeness of the face of Jesus (whatever he looked like — and assuming that he even existed at all), and in response to the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana reminding local officials of the US Constitution’s mandate separating state from religion; quoted from Karen Turni Bazile, “ACLU Raises Objections Over Cross-Shaped Katrina Memorial,” beliefnet

Rev Lester Roloff (?-1982)
Founder of numerous Texas homes for "wayward youth" eventually shut down for their brutal biblical child-control techniques

Better a pink bottom than a black soul.
-- Rev Lester Roloff, defending his punitive child-control techniques. Roloff was jailed in 1973 and again in 1975 for child abuse. His homes were shut down numerous times, but eventually resurrected when Governor George W Bush allowed the homes to escape the scrutiny of the State of Texas (see below). Quoted from Conrad Goeringer, AANEWS 739, April 11, 2000, issued by American Atheists.

"The Christian agency ... the Texas Association of Christian Child Care Agencies, Inc, ... a private organization created by Governor George W Bush last year ... will re-inspect the homes annually and has the power to take the accreditation away."
-- Corpus Christi Caller-Times, describing Governor G W Bush's scam that skirted the homes' inability to earn legitimate certification. The "Agency" has inspected and accredited only one institution, and that is the People's Baptist Church. Quoted from Conrad Goeringer, AANEWS 739, April 11, 2000, issued by American Atheists.
 

"The time has also come to recognize the painful truth that traditional Judeo-Christian moral values of pain and pleasure in human relationships have contributed substantially to child abuse and to the prevalence of physical violence in Western civilization.... The religious system upon which our culture is based holds that pain, suffering and deprivation are moral and necessary to save one's soul and make one a 'good person.' The crucifixion and scourging of Christ are examples."
-- Dr. James W Prescott, former president of the Maryland Psychological Association, discussing awareness about rising rates of child abuse, in an October, 1977, magazine article, quoted from Conrad Goeringer, AANEWS 739, April 11, 2000, issued by American Atheists
 

Emergency Room Doctor

"I'm sorry, Ma’am, I have to call the police. Your son has been tortured."
-- Emergency Room Doctor, to Teresa Calalay upon pulling her son, Justin Simons, from the modern Rolloff-inspired home, which had been allowed to continue operation under a George W Bush faith-based charity scheme which allowed faith-based charities to escape government scrutiny, quoted from Matt Kelley, "Bush plan invites abuses, critics say: Religious groups target of probes" from Associated Press, February 3, 2001
 

You are going to see again the child about which you read in the Terrible Judgment, that it was condemned to hell. See! It is a pitiful sight. The little child is in this red hot oven. Hear the fire! It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in hell, despair, desperate and horrible... This child committed very bad mortal sins, knowing well the harm of what it was doing, and knowing that hell would be the punishment. God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God, in His mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood.
-- Roman Catholic Church, Tracts for Spiritual Reading, an official Roman Catholic Children's book. William Meagher, Vicar-General of Dublin, states "I have carefully read over this Little Volume for Children and have found nothing whatever in it contrary to the doctrines of the Holy Faith; but on the contrary, a great deal to charm, instruct and edify the youthful classes for whose benefit it has been written."

The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.
-- Roman Catholic Church, in the Holy Inquisition's decision against Galileo

Hugh Ross
Physicist and astronomer; biblical fundamentalist; stumper for 'Progressive Creationism,' a transitional form which refuses to hold the 'young Earth' position and thereby earning the ire of his more fundamentalistic brethren who insist that 'no scientist was there over the billions of years in question' and therefor the Earth cannot possibly be that old, but at the same time insisting on the scientific accuracy of the Bible, thereby ruffling the feathers of those potential science-theist allies more sympathetic with traditional science

... the hypothesis that God has increased the complexity of life on earth by successive creations of new life forms over billions of years while miraculously changing the earth to accommodate the new life.
-- Hugh Ross, giving his definition of "Progressive Creationism," quoted from Mark Van Bebber and Paul S Taylor, "Hugh Ross & Progressive Creationism"

[The evidence from cosmology] determines that the cause of the universe is functionally equivalent to the God of the Bible, a Being beyond the matter, energy, space, and time of the cosmos.
-- Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos (1995), p. 61, quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)

The plan of salvation as stated in the Bible can be seen through observation of the universe around us.
-- Hugh Ross, quoted from Mark Van Bebber and Paul S Taylor, "Hugh Ross & Progressive Creationism"

Even a brilliant research scientist can waste his or her efforts, in [Stephan Hawking's] case on theoretically impossible lines of research, if he or she rejects clear evidence pointing to God.
-- Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos (1995), pp. 91-2, quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)

[Recent evidence regarding quantum mechanics is] sufficient to rule out all theological options but one -- the Bible's.
-- Hugh Ross, arrogance at its highest, in The Creator and the Cosmos (1995), p. 95, quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)

The Entity who brought the universe into existence must be a Personal Being, for only a person can design with anywhere near this degree of precision.
-- Hugh Ross, in The Creator and the Cosmos (1995), p. 118, quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)

Not one example of significant self-generation or self-organization can be found in the entire realm of nature.... Without causation, nothing happens and without organization by an intelligent being, systems tend to lower and lower levels of complexity.
-- Hugh Ross, actually there are in fact many examples of this, from snowflakes to weather patterns, quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001) chapter 3

Victor Stenger: Ross Not Extreme Like the Others

"I have characterized Ross as exemplifying an extreme position among theistic scientists. However, he is not so extreme as to promote the scientifically unsound notions of the young-Earth creationists and other anti-evolutionists ... They are so far off the scale that their scientific claims need not be taken seriously. Their distortions and misrepresentations of the scientific facts are not consistent with their self-righteous claims of acting to protect all that is good and moral."
-- Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)
 

Victor Stenger: No Conspiracy Against Big Bang

"Ignoring relativity, quantum mechanics, nuclear energy, DNA, and the rest of twentieth century science, Ross has characterized the COBE satellite results as "the discovery of the century," and claims they fulfill the prophecies of the Bible. He inflates the importance of the proponents of the steady-state models, like Hoyle, and charges that they are surreptitiously engaged in the ancient assault mounted by science against God. Ignoring the fact that the overwhelming consensus of cosmologists now accept the big bang, Ross would have us think that scientists are engaged in some kind of atheist conspiracy to suppress the big bang theory. In fact, Hoyle and his supporters are far from the mainstream on this issue. The overwhelming majority of cosmologists today accept the big bang. It has become as fundamental to the framework of cosmology as evolution has become to the framework of biology."
-- Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001); Ross quip from The Creator and the Cosmos, p. 19

Karl Christian Rove
President George W Bush's top advisor

I don't know. Just get me a fucking faith-based thing. Got it?
-- Karl Rove, to the (unnamed) volunteer head of the Bush Administration's Faith-Based Initiative office,who had asked Rove how to set the office up in one week, without a staff or a budget, according to David Kuo, former special assistant to the President and the Number Two man in Bush's Faith-Based Office in his book, Tempting Faith (September, 2007)

Rev Wendell Runion
Asheville, North Carolina, minister; owner of a local Christian radio station who (oxymoronically) organizes massive 'spontaneous' prayer outbursts at high school football as a bullying move against America's Establishment Clause

We are encouraging everyone that attends football games to join in the Lord's Prayer immediately and spontaneously as soon as the national anthem is complete.
-- Wendell Runion, describing the "spontaneous prayer" events organized by Runion's group, We Still Pray, quoted in James Ridgeway's Village Voice column, Mondo Washington: "Guard Dogs of 'Morality'" August 16-22, 2000

If you are going to have organized spontaneity, you have to have something everybody knows that is easy to say.
-- Wendell Runion, explaining why We Still Pray chose the "Our Father" prayer, quoted from Tanya L Green, "Prayer Still in the Game: Citizens organize to protest Supreme Court ruling," September 22, 2000, posted on the website of Beverly LaHaye's group, Concerned Women for America

This is not in defiance of the Supreme Court ruling.... If the fans break out in a spontaneous prayer, there is no Supreme Court ruling against that.
-- Wendell Runion, in the Citizen-Times, quoted from Art Toalston, "'We Still Pray' aims to go national with rallies, prayer at football games," from Baptist Press, posted on worthynews.com

There is a Constitution where this phrase was found -- the former Soviet Union.
-- Wendell Runion, describing the language "state-church separation," in We Still Pray online material, quoted in Steve Benen, "Righteous Revolution Or Constitutional Quagmire?," State and Church, October, 2000

Anybody that would feel unwelcome because the Lord's Prayer is spoken at a ball game is a little narrow minded.
-- Wendell Runion, commenting on the decision of Lawrence Erlbaum, president of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Publishers, not to open a plant in Asheville due to the We Still Pray organization's effort to organize "spontaneous prayer" events at area high school football games and to amend the Constitution regarding religious practices, quoted from Mark Barrett, "Firm Rejects Asheville," in the Citizen-Times, December 28, 2000

That's definitely Satanic, influenced by Satan.
-- Wendell Runion, commenting on a the plans of a group of Wiccans to gather on City-County Plaza the night before Halloween to celebrate the Celtic new year, quoted from Tula Andonaras, "Witches plan gathering at City-County Plaza Oct. 30," in the Citizen-Times, 24 October 1995

Charles Taze Russell
Founder of Watch Tower Magazine, whose followers later formed the Jehovah's Witnesses

The deliverance of the saints must take place some time before 1914.
-- Charles Taze Russell, Studies in the Scripture, vol. 3, 1910 edition, quoted from David Milsted, The Cassell Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations (1999)

The deliverance of the saints must take place some time after 1914.
-- Charles Taze Russell, Studies in the Scripture, vol. 3, 1923 edition, quoted from David Milsted, The Cassell Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations (1999)

The Subtle Fulmination of the Encircled Sea

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