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1 " If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine--why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as 'irrelevant'? "
― May Sarton , Journal of a Solitude
2 " [Talking about ancient Greece](...) the great institutions (...) were created by older males who then trained younger males. They all had a strong homoerotic element. (...) This thereby increased the " rightness" of masculinity, never mind that half the world was feminine. That other half was also interested in philosophy, the arts, the law, religion, and athletics, but they had this other task -bringing children to term and nurturing them through the early years of their lives. And doing it again and again. Not that this gave status to women. On the contrary, the man's seed made the child. A woman was simply the receptacle provided by nature to carry the child until it was ready to come out. (...) "
3 " Religious intolerance is an idea that found its earliest expression in the Old Testament, where the Hebrew tribe depicts itself waging a campaign of genocide on the Palestinian peoples to steal their land. They justified this heinous behavior on the grounds that people not chosen by their god were wicked and therefore did not deserve to live or keep their land. In effect, the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian peoples, eradicating their race with the Jew's own Final Solution, was the direct result of a policy of religious superiority and divine right. Joshua 6-11 tells the sad tale, and one needs only read it and consider the point of view of the Palestinians who were simply defending their wives and children and the homes they had built and the fields they had labored for. The actions of the Hebrews can easily be compared with the American genocide of its native peoples - or even, ironically, the Nazi Holocaust. With the radical advent of Christianity, this self-righteous intolerance was borrowed from the Jews, and a new twist was added. The conversion of infidels by any means possible became the newfound calling card of religious fervor, and this new experiment in human culture spread like wildfire. By its very nature, how could it not have? Islam followed suit, conquering half the world in brutal warfare and, much like its Christian counterpart, it developed a new and convenient survival characteristic: the destruction of all images and practices attributed to other religions. Muslims destroyed millions of statues and paintings in India and Africa, and forced conversion under pain of death (or by more subtle tricks: like taxing only non-Muslims), while the Catholic Church busily burned books along with pagans, shattering statues and defacing or destroying pagan art - or converting it to Christian use. Laws against pagan practices and heretics were in full force throughrout Europe by the sixth century, and as long as those laws were in place it was impossible for anyone to refuse the tenets of Christianity and expect to keep their property or their life. Similar persecution and harassment continues in Islamic countries even to this day, officially and unofficially. "
― Richard C. Carrier , Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism
4 " Start thinking for yourself, ask 'why?' and even venture to say 'why should I?' and pretty soon you will have half the world at your throat for being a 'trouble maker'. "
― Christina Engela , Black Sunrise
5 " That," she said, " is a little closer to how I imagine it works. Whether or not you pray has absolutely nothing to do with the person to your left. It's like saying you shouldn't get the moon in your window, or else the other cars wouldn't get the moon in their windows. But everyone gets the moon. It's not an option, to not have the moon in your window. You just see it. It's there." She bit her lip. The window in the office grew golden with late afternoon." Half the world can't see the moon," said the doctor." It's not the greatest example," said the rabbi. "
6 " I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take. "
― Charles Bukowski , Pulp
7 " Her satellite made one full orbit around Planet Earth every sixteen hours. It was a prison that came with an endlessly breathtaking view— vast blue oceans and swirling clouds and sunrises that set half the world on fire. "
― Marissa Meyer , Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3)
8 " This is a silly place. Half the world has no clean water. The other half has so much that they pooh in it. "
9 " How many more cars, clothes, toys and trinkets do we really need before we wake up and realize that half the world goes to bed every night with empty stomachs and naked bodies? "
― K.P. Yohannan , No Longer a Slumdog: Bringing Hope to Children in Crisis
10 " You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let's not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment. "