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In Reply to: Hannibal Lector in all his sophisticated glory... posted by Young Genius on November 06, 2006 at 18:27:59:
Your post reminded me of this quotation I've often seen on the web: "Those who can make you believe absurdity can make you commit atrocity."
It turns out that it is a paraphrase of comments made by Voltaire in Questions sur les miracles (1765). Here's the original statement, translated into English of course:
"Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust
because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your
heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world."
