It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb and said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.
Charlotte Perkins GilmanThe peculiarity of all death-based religions is that their subject-matter is entirely outside of facts. Men could think and think, talk and argue, advance, deny, assert, and controversy, and write innumerable books, without being hampered at any time by any fact.
Charlotte Perkins GilmanIn a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.
Charlotte Perkins GilmanTo swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.
Charlotte Perkins GilmanTo attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must do something.
Charlotte Perkins GilmanIt cannot be too strongly asserted that the insistence on blind, unreasoning faith is due mainly to the maintenance of a subject-matter upon which there was no knowledge, namely the 'other world'; and that this basis was assumed because of early man's preoccupation with death. It is, unfortunately, quite possible to believe a thing which is contradicted by facts, especially if the facts are not generally known; but if the whole position on which we rested our religions had been visibly opposed by what we did know, even the unthinking masses would, in time, have noticed it.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman