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In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, we have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them.

Stephen L. Carter

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Stephen L. Carter
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: October 26
Journalist
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Professor
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Stephen Lisle Carter
Sometimes
Christian
Faithful
Culture
Presses
Religiously
Keep
Created
Privately
Political
Politics
Dominating
Doe
Religious
Publicly
Wells
Though
Zeal
Well
Religion
Sensible
Matter
Faith
Legal

More quotes by Stephen L. Carter

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One sees a trend in our political and legal cultures toward treating religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant, a trend supported by a rhetoric that implies that there is something wrong with religious devotion.
Stephen L. Carter
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Teasing out the way the world might look through another's eyes is what makes the creative process so fascinating and enjoyable.
Stephen L. Carter
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So much emotion goes into writing fiction.
Stephen L. Carter
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We live today in a world in which nobody believes choices should have consequences. But may I tell you the great secret that our culture seeks to deny? You cannot escape the consequences of your choices. Time runs in only one direction.
Stephen L. Carter
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Love is a gift we deliver when we would rather not.
Stephen L. Carter
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The very aspect of religions that many of their critics most fear - that the religiously devout, in the name of their faith, take positions that differ from approved state policy - is one of their strengths.
Stephen L. Carter
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I think of my novels as entertainments.
Stephen L. Carter
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I find it hard to think of myself as selling books. I don't even have a Web site. I want to sit and write, not sell.
Stephen L. Carter
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In contemporary American culture, the religions are more and more treated as just passing beliefs - almost as fads - rather than as the fundaments upon which the devout build their lives.
Stephen L. Carter
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To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.
Stephen L. Carter
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Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.
Stephen L. Carter
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I think that black fiction authors have to work very hard to avoid being typed as seeking only a black audience.
Stephen L. Carter
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True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife.
Stephen L. Carter
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Even in 2012, if there's a black character in the movies or on television that's a professional, if we even hear about their backgrounds they're always 'up from the streets.
Stephen L. Carter
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There is much depressing evidence that the religious voice is required to stay out of the public square only when it is pressed in a conservative cause.
Stephen L. Carter
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We do not credit to the ideal of religious freedom when we talk as though religious belief is something of which public-spirited adults should be ashamed.
Stephen L. Carter
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This trivializing rhetoric runs the subtle but unmistakable message: pray if you like, worship if you must, but whatever you do, do not on any account take your religion seriously.
Stephen L. Carter
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Every conflict plagues the peace that follows it.
Stephen L. Carter
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In real life there are indeed black people who have been in the middle class for generations, but in entertainment it's as if they don't exist.
Stephen L. Carter