Unfollow Quotes

“Doubt was nothing more than an epistemological humility: a deep and practical awareness that outside our sphere of knowledge there existed information and experiences that might show our position to be in error. Doubt causes us to hold a strong position a bit more loosely, such that an acknowledgment of ignorance or error doesn't crush our sense of self or leave us totally unmoored if our position proves untenable. Certainty is the opposite: it hampers inquiry and hinders growth. It teaches us to ignore evidence that contradicts our ideas, and encourages us to defend our position at all costs, even as it reveals itself as indefensible. Certainty sees compromise as weak, hypocritical, evil, suppressing empathy and allowing us to justify inflicting horrible pain on others.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“The discovery of internal inconsistency and hypocrisy as an important first step in seeing outside of group dogma.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“That the answer to bad ideas is to publicly reason against them, to advocate for and propagate better ones. And that it is dangerous to vest any central authority with broad powers to limit the bounds of acceptable discussion—because these powers lend themselves to authoritarian abuse, the creation of echo chambers, and the marginalization of ideas that are true but unpopular. In short, the principles underlying the freedom of speech recognize that all of us are susceptible to cognitive deficiencies and groupthink, and that an open marketplace of ideas is our best defense against them.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

“It wasn't the desire for an easy life that led me to leave. Losing them was the price of honesty. A shredded heart for a quiet conscience.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“Doubt causes us to hold a strong position a bit more loosely, such that an acknowledgment of ignorance or error doesn’t crush our sense of self or leave us totally unmoored if our position proves untenable. Certainty is the opposite: it hampers inquiry and hinders growth. It teaches us to ignore evidence that contradicts our ideas, and encourages us to defend our position at all costs, even as it reveals itself as indefensible.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“Doubt was nothing more than epistemological humility: a deep and practical awareness that outside our sphere of knowledge there existed information and experiences that might show our position to be in error. Doubt causes us to hold a strong position a bit more loosely, such that an acknowledgment of ignorance or error doesn’t crush our sense of self or leave us totally unmoored if our position proves untenable. Certainty is the opposite: it hampers inquiry and hinders growth. It teaches us to ignore evidence that contradicts our ideas, and encourages us to defend our position at all costs, even as it reveals itself as indefensible.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“It's okay if you break my heart”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“Though I had agreed with every word, there was one part that rang strongly discordant in my mind: "I've watched carefully and listened to my grandfather and those who oppose him. My grandfather's Bible-preaching is more agreeable to my heart." We never appealed to our own thoughts or feelings as reliable evidence of truth, and we routinely disparaged others for doing so. The Bible was true because it was true, regardless of how I-or anyone else - felt about it or any of its teachings. This had been a theme of my life, oft-repeated by my mother: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
There was always urgent warning in my mother's voice when she quoted this passage: we could not trust our hearts.
Our feelings would lead us astray. Why had Margie written that sentence? I'd been almost physically repulsed by it, and watching my nieces bound across the field as we arrived at the park, I was finally able to pinpoint why: my sixteen-year-old self had started to recognize the contradiction. We used our hearts to authenticate the moral truth of the Bible - the same Bible that told us our hearts were deceitful. I shook my head as I realized that all we had was our hearts. In writing that sentence, Margie had unwittingly betrayed that at bottom-resting beneath all the chapters and verses that we'd spent years quoting and memorizing-the foundation of it all was a belief that our hearts had led us true when they told us the Bible was the answer.
Our unreliable, desperately wicked, deceitful hearts.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“Jesus said, No prophet is accepted in his own country, and that rang true to me; it’s easier to accept a human as divinely ordained when you’re not intimately familiar with the mundanity of their daily life and the eccentricities of their personality.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

“I love you so much, Bekah." Why didn't better words exist? Your voice will follow me like a shadow for the rest of my days and I'll never be whole without you and The nights I dream of you will be my happiest. I couldn't let her go.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“I don't think they're bad people. I think they're good people who have been trapped by bad ideas . . . There just has to be a way out.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“We dismissed Nathan as being driven by the same pecuniary motive people falsely assigned to us, and for partly the same reason: to avoid facing an uncomfortable truth, a blurring of the line between the good guys and the bad. So we called the truth a lie and rewrote history as though it were in our power to dictate reality so long as it was in the church’s judgment and interest. So long as we all held the line, no one could prevail against us.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“You know I love you. You know I do. It's not just the idea of you. I know you. You also know I'm not coming to Topeka.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“Doubt was nothing more than epistemological humility: a deep and practical awareness that outside our sphere of knowledge there existed information and experiences that might show our position to be in error. Doubt causes us to hold a strong position a bit more loosely, such that an acknowledgment of ignorance or error doesn’t crush our sense of self or leave us totally unmoored if our position proves untenable. Certainty is the opposite: it hampers inquiry and hinders growth. It teaches us to ignore evidence that contradicts our ideas, and encourages us to defend our position at all costs, even as it reveals itself as indefensible. Certainty sees compromise as weak, hypocritical, evil, suppressing empathy and allowing us to justify inflicting horrible pain on”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“It is disconcerting - shamefully, unimaginably so - to look back and accept that my fellow church members and I were collectively engaging in the most egregious display of logical blindness that I have ever witnessed.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

“I could articulate the meanings of 'scat,' 'rimming,' and golden showers all before my eighth birthday, though I was loath to do so. To publicly accuse gays of filthy behaviors would leave a girl open to challenge -- "How do you know?" -- and thus put her in the unenviable position of having to explain that it's in a book called The Joys of Gay Sex ... which no she had not read ... but her grandfather told her about it ... during church ... from the pulpit.”
― Megan Phelps-Roper, Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope