The Devil's Rejects Best Quotes

When in the seventh century King Redwald of East Anglia provided one altar in his church to sacrifice to Christ, and another small one to offer victims to devils,1 he was not behaving childishly, or cunningly hoping to get the best of both worlds, but merely acting according to normal heathen custom, since acceptance of one god did not mean that one wholly rejected one’s neighbour’s deity. This indeed must have been one of the most difficult lessons for the new converts to Christianity to learn, and while they gained in single-mindedness, it is to be feared that they lost much of their old spirit of tolerance. The

The Devil offered Christ the ability to turn stones into bread. Then he offered him the chance to test God, or His angels actually, by throwing himself off a cliff. Which I have always thought was probably not a very tempting temptation. To see if the angels would rescue him, right? Christ says no, like any sane person would if you asked him if he would like to jump off a cliff. “Finally, the Devil offered to make Christ the Ruler of the World. Much more tempting than jumping off a cliff, definitely. “But Christ rejects that too. “He rejects everything for what he cannot know. The Great Unknown. He chooses to take”– she shrugged her shoulders to underline how little it seemed– “whatever. Anything. He is saying that what is unknown is better than anything that is known. That the freedom to go through life without even ever knowing what is going to happen to you is the best possible thing that can happen, better than any miraculous gift could ever be.

If appointing a devil’s advocate is not possible, there are other ways a wise person can “widen the keyhole” and avoid distorting lenses and filters. When it comes to making consequential decisions, for example, you can compare how you think about the pros and cons right now with how you imagine you’ll think about them ten years from now. Or you might consider what you’d recommend for a friend or what you think someone you respect would recommend. As we saw in chapter 3, you can shed light on the best product, proposal, or person to select by turning the question around and also asking which is the right one to reject. Some decision analysts recommend conducting a “premortem,” that is, assume that a decision has gone horribly wrong and ask yourself what information you’d want to gather to find out why.18 Get that information now.