Given that Robertson is the flavor of the day, I decided to see what other "nuggets of wisdom" he'd doled out to the faithful. Not surprisingly, some of this makes his more recent remarks appear tame.
"They scream, "First Amendment." Of course, the First Amendment, as you and I both know, is a restriction on Congress.... So it really doesn't have anything to do with what you say or what I say, one way or the other."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, December 10, 1990, deliberately misrepresenting what it means by "Congress shall make no law" by omitting mention of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and yet sniveling about the Supreme Court's state-church decisions.
"We have a court that has essentially stuck its finger in God's eye and said we're going to legislate you out of the schools. We're going to take your commandments from off the courthouse steps in various states. We're not going to let little children read the commandments of God. We're not going to let the Bible be read, no prayer in our schools. We have insulted God at the highest levels of our government. And then we say, "Why does this happen?"
Well, why it's happening is that God Almighty is lifting his protection from us."
-- Pat Robertson, explaining on his 700 Club cable TV program why the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had occurred two days earlier (but oblivious as to why such nations as Sweden and The Netherlands, both many orders more secular than the U.S. could ever hope to be, are spared such tragedies), quoted from Beth Corbin, ed., Americans United Activist Release: "Pat Robertson Prays for Supreme Court Changes" (July 15, 2003)
"This is God's power and he sent this thing to warn us ... we needed a shock."
-- Pat Robertson, remarking on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, quoted by Robert E. Norlander in a dispatch of September 14, 2001
"The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, December 30, 1981
"Individual Christians are the only ones really -- and Jewish people, those who trust God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob -- are the only ones that are qualified to have the reign, because hopefully, they will be governed by God and submit to Him."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, January 11, 1985, defending his stance that only Christians and Jews are fit to hold public office
"I never said that in my life ... I never said only Christians and Jews. I never said that."
-- Pat Robertson, Time magazine, after having been confronted regarding his statement on The 700 Club of January 11, 1985
"I think patriotism, love of God, love of country, support of the traditional family. They
believe it would be good for our country if families were closer together.... I think they feel about them more strongly than others do."
-- Pat Robertson, speaking at a rally in Lansing, Michigan, in 1986, having been asked if there are some issues Christians feel more strongly about that non-Christians
"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, January 14, 1991
"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."
-- Pat Robertson, fundraising letter, 1992
"Planned Parenthood is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism -- everything that the Bible condemns."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, April 9, 1991
"Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals -- the two things seem to go together."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, January 21, 1993, ignoring the facts that the Nazis killed homosexuals as ruthlessly as they did Jews and that Satanim emerged with Anton Szandor LaVey
"I think we ought to close Halloween down. Do you want your children to dress up as witches? The Druids used to dress up like this when they were doing human sacrifice... are acting out Satanic rituals and participating in it, and don't even realize it."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, October 29, 1982
"It's one thing to say, "We have rights to jobs ... we have rights to be left alone in out little corner of the world to do our thing." It's an entirely different thing to say, well, "We're not only going to go into the schools and we're going to take your children and your grandchildren and turn them into homosexuals." Now that's wrong."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, September 17, 1992
"You see what happened in 1962. They took prayer out of the schools. The next year the Supreme Court ordered Bible reading taken from the schools. And then progressing, liberals, most of them atheistic educators, have pushed to remove all religion from the lives of children.... The people who wrote the "Humanist Manifesto" and their pupils and their disciples are in charge of education in America today."
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, January 13, 1995
"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."
-- Pat Robertson, interview with Molly Ivins, 1993. Worse than the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Worse than the plight of the Natives and the African Slaves in North America. Worse than the plight of the "witches" and the "atheists" in Europe and America. Worse, even, than the plight of the Midianites, allegedly exterminated without remorse by Robertson's hero Moses. Yeah, right!
(Source: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/revpat.htm)