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We don't cut off the hands of thieves or castrate rapists. Why must we murder murderers?

Wendy Kaminer

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Wendy Kaminer
Age: 74
Born: 1949
Born: December 28
Journalist
Lawyer
Writer
Murder
Cutting
Hands
Must
Castrate
Rapists
Murderers
Murderer
Thieves

More quotes by Wendy Kaminer

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The dissemination of pseudoscience, including such things as the fascination with near-death experiences and the growing belief by Americans -- 34 percent of them -- in reincarnation are dangerous. They help to break down the standards of reason.
Wendy Kaminer
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The phenomenal success of the recovery movement reflects two simple truths that emerge in adolescence: all people love to talk about themselves, and most people are mad at their parents. You don't have to be in denial to doubt that truths like these will set us free.
Wendy Kaminer
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Like heterosexuality, faith in immaterial realities is popularly considered essential to individual morality.
Wendy Kaminer
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I don't think of myself as having a particular role. I'm lucky enough to be able to make my living essentially by expressing my opinions. But, you know, I think the world would manage quite well if I weren't doing it.
Wendy Kaminer
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There are only two states of being in the world of codependency - recovery and denial.
Wendy Kaminer
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Jargon seems to be the place where the right brain and the left brain meet.
Wendy Kaminer
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The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.
Wendy Kaminer
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Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.
Wendy Kaminer
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I don't care if religious people consider me amoral because I lack their beliefs in God. I do however care deeply about efforts to turn religious beliefs into law and those efforts benefit greatly from the conviction that individually and collectively we cannot be good without God.
Wendy Kaminer
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Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.
Wendy Kaminer
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I don't see a direct conflict between the rights of individuals and the rights of communities, because I don't perceive of communities as having rights in a way that individuals do. Communities certainly have interests, but they don't exactly have rights.
Wendy Kaminer
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As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought.
Wendy Kaminer
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If all issues are personalized, we lose our capacity to entertain ideas, to generalize from our own or someone else's experiences, to think abstractly. We substitute sentimentality for thought.
Wendy Kaminer
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When the inner child finds a guardian angel, publishers are in heaven.
Wendy Kaminer
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I don't spend much time thinking about whether God exists. I don't consider that a relevant question. It's unanswerable and irrelevant to my life, so I put it in the category of things I can't worry about.
Wendy Kaminer
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Give the FBI unchecked domestic spying powers and instead of focusing on preventing terrorism, it will revert to doing what it does best - monitoring, harassing, and intimidating political dissidents and thousands of harmless immigrants.
Wendy Kaminer
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It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages.
Wendy Kaminer
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Under the rubric of religious freedom, we respect the right to worship differently much more than the right to worship not at all.
Wendy Kaminer
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In this climate - with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace - making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.
Wendy Kaminer
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Secularists are often wrongly accused of trying to purge religious ideals from public discourse. We simply want to deny them public sponsorship.
Wendy Kaminer