Jay Parini

Writer

1948-04-02

Quotes by Jay Parini

• It's not unusual for socio-economic, even racial or ethnic, groups to cluster.

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• God is God, but he has various names in different languages, and each strand of monotheistic religion has multiple ways of describing the godhead.

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• The fact is, we need markers in life, whether we subscribe to a religion or not. And the major holidays, such as Christmas, serve to remind us of the turning world.

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• Christmas is a story that has both religious and pagan origins, and to ignore its power is to ignore the power of myth - those symbols and legends that help us to ground our lives.

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• Jesus remains the most influential person in history, one who has inspired untold followers for millennia.

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• We are a nation of immigrants, a quilt of many colors, and we've managed over more than two centuries to create a way of life that allows for a reasonable degree of upward mobility, that prizes individual liberty, promotes freedom of religion and genuinely values equal rights for all citizens.

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• To bolster his right flank and attract women voters, John McCain had cynically opted for a running mate who was, by any stretch of the imagination, unqualified for a position a heartbeat away from the presidency.

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• I suspect that a huge amount of the anxiety and suffering that we see around can be closely traced to our wanton misuse of our resources. Just look at any garbage dump and see what is wasted. In a sense, we've wasted our souls.

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• With the Patriot Bill in place, the NSA no longer needed to get a warrant from a judge to tap into anybody's electronic information. A Surveillance State that would have boggled the mind of Orwell was born.

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• The whole Christmas story was probably a later addition to the gospel narratives, presented only by the authors of Matthew and Luke. Mark and John seem never to have heard of the manger in Bethlehem, the Massacre of the Innocents, the hovering star, the three wise men, and so forth.

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• Colleges and classrooms should be havens of tranquility, places where thoughtful discussions occur, where students work together with their teachers to acquire knowledge of the arts and sciences.

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• When you think about 'The Grapes of Wrath,' it's an American masterpiece, and a very long process goes into the making of such a book.

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