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Quote by Vernor Vinge

“So even in hell, there are clowns.”

Work

In this novel, a powerful empire faces a rebellion led by a brilliant but enigmatic leader. The story delves into the intricacies of power, governance, and the human condition amidst a backdrop of advanced technology and interstellar politics. more

Author

Vernor Vinge

Vernor Vinge is an American computer scientist known for his contributions to both science fiction literature and computer science. His works often explore the impact of technological advancements on human society, with his most famous novel being 'Rainbow's End'. more

“Surely this is the objectionable kind of ignorance, to think one knows what one does not know? But in this, gentlemen, here also perhaps I am different from the general run of mankind, and if I should claim to be wiser than someone in something it would be in this, that as I do not know well enough about what happens in the house of Hades, so I do not think I know.”

Hell Ignorance Hades

Author:Socrates

“There are two people in the waiting room. One is an extremely thin old man, a retired teacher of French who still gives tuition by correspondence, and who whilst waiting his turn is correcting a pile of scripts with a pencil sharpened to a fine point. On the script he is about to examine, the essay title can be read: In Hell, Raskolnikov meets Meursault (“The Outsider”). Imagine a dialogue between them using material from both novels.”

Hell Crime And Punishment The Outsider

Book:Life: A User's Manual

Source: Life: A User's Manual

“And what shall we say of the man Christ Jesus? Who, that loves his brother, would not, upheld by the love of Christ, and with a dim hope that in the far-off time there might be some help for him, arise from the company of the blessed, and walk down into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven? Who, in the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world-time when men were taught to love their neighbor as themselves, was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, traveling the weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother?—who, I mean, that had the mind of Christ, that had the love of the Father?”

Hell Universalism Apokatastasis Universal Reconciliation

Book:Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III

Source: Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III

“Who, after all, is saying something more objectively atrocious, or more aggressively perverse? The person who claims that every newborn infant enters the world justly under the threat of eternal dereliction, and that a good God imposes or permits the imposition of a state of eternal agony on finite, created rational beings as part of the mystery of his love or sovereignty or justice? Or the person who observes that such ideas are cruel and barbarous and depraved? Which of these two should really be, if not ashamed of his or her words, at least hesitant, ambivalent, and even a little penitent in uttering them? And which has a better right to moral indignation at what the other has said? And, really, don’t these questions answer themselves? A belief does not merit unconditional reverence just because it is old, nor should it be immune to being challenged in terms commensurate to the scandal it seems to pose. And the belief that a God of infinite intellect, justice, love, and power would condemn rational beings to a state of perpetual torment, or would allow them to condemn themselves on account of their own delusion, pain, and anger, is probably worse than merely scandalous. It may be the single most horrid notion the religious imagination has ever conceived, and the most irrational and spiritually corrosive picture of existence possible. And anyone who thinks that such claims are too strong or caustic, while at the same time finding the traditional notion of a hell of everlasting suffering perfectly unobjectionable, needs to consider whether he or she is really thinking clearly about the matter at all. (from Public Orthodoxy, “In Defense of a Certain Tone of Voice”)”