Dan Brown Quotes

Then let me ask you this famous question: Would you rather live in a world without technology…or in a world without religion? Would you rather live without medicine, electricity, transportation, and antibiotics…or without zealots waging war over fictional tales and imaginary spirits?

And history has proven repeatedly that lunatics will rise to power again and again on tidal waves of aggressive nationalism and intolerance, even in places where it seems utterly incomprehensible.

For centuries the church has stood by while science picked away at religion bit by bit. Debunking miracles. Training the mind to overcome the heart. Condemning religion as the opiate of the masses. They denounce God as a hallucination - a delusional crutch for those too weak to accept that life is meaningless. I could not stand by while science presumed to harness the power of God himself! Proof, you say? Yes, proof of science's ignorance! What is wrong with the admission that something exists beyond our understanding? The day science substantiates God in a lab is the day people stop needing faith!

To permit ignorance is to empower it. To do nothing as our leaders proclaim absurdities is a crime of complacency. As is letting our schools and churches teach outright untruths to our children.

Sometimes, circumstances raise impossible decisions.
-William Pickering

the worst kind of loneliness in the world is the isolation that comes from being misunderstood. It can make people lose their grasp on reality.

Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.

الحياة مليئة بالأسرار ولا يمكنك أن تعرفيها كلها دفعة واحدة.

Lieutenant Chatrand: I don’t understand this omnipotent-benevolent thing.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: You are confused because the Bible describes God as an omnipotent and benevolent deity.
Lieutenant Chatrand: Exactly.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning.
Lieutenant Chatrand: I understand the concept. It’s just... there seems to be a contradiction.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man’s starvation, war, sickness...
Lieutenant Chatrand: Exactly! Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn’t he?
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Would He?
Lieutenant Chatrand: Well... if God Loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Do you have children?
Lieutenant Chatrand: No, signore.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Imagine you had an eight-year-old son... would you love him?
Lieutenant Chatrand: Of course.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Would you let him skateboard?
Lieutenant Chatrand: Yeah, I guess. Sure I’d let him skateboard, but I’d tell him to be careful.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: So as this child’s father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes?
Lieutenant Chatrand: I wouldn’t run behind him and mollycoddle him if that’s what you mean.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: But what if he fell and skinned his knee?
Lieutenant Chatrand: He would learn to be more careful.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child’s pain, you would choose to show you love by letting him learn his own lessons?
Lieutenant Chatrand: Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It’s how we learn.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Ex

That is the definition of faith — acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.

الخوف يقرّب الناس من الله

Every epic collapse, the provost believed, could be traced back to a single moment — a chance meeting, a bad decision, an indiscreet glance.

Politics is a desperate business.

الحقيقة قوية. وإن كنا ننجذب كلنا نحو أفكار متشابهة قد يرجع ذلك إلى كون تلك الأفكار صحيحة، مكتوبة في أعماقنا. وحين نسمع الحقيقة وإن لم نفهمها نشعر أنها تتردد في داخلنا تتذبذب مع حكمتنا اللاواعية. ربما كنا لا نتعلم الحقيقة بل نستعيدها، نتذكرها، ندركها من جديد لأنها موجودة أساسا فينا.

I am not an atheist — I think I'm happily confused and a work in progress; I'm sort of more agnostic. I do think that science has become the lens through which we see the world, more and more.