Thursday, January 20, 2011

Misquoting Adams

I just looked over a clip of Bill Maher insulting the tea party movement. In it he has a direct quote from Adams saying
This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it.

This is pretty damning and a home run for the "Founders were deists" school of thought. Unfortunately for Maher it's a misquotation (misleading really). The full, in context quote provides the opposite meaning
Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been on the point of breaking out, 'this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!!' But in this exclamation, I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in public company—I mean hell.

1 comment:

  1. That's the funny thing, it isn't religious. A great many of its adherents are religious however and for Maher, it's any brickbat that's to hand. I'm not going to chase down all of Maher's assertions but that one was striking and I hadn't heard it before. That it turns out to be nearly the complete opposite of what Adams meant tells you something about Maher's knowledge and honesty.

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