Here is an assortment of quotes and lines I've come across. They speak to many different topics; reading, books, free speech, censorship, fishing, science, pseudo-science, religion, life, politics, & a bit of this and a bit of that. They´re in no particular order.
I'll start with one of my own:
Practice random acts of thinking, for yourself! © 2004
To his support now had come his most treacherous ally -- that sense of the ridiculous which had always made it impossible for him to take very seriously even the most solemn occasions.
Against the Fall of Night, Arthur C. Clark
The concept of the "work week" is one of the more deadening aspects of our civilization, robbing us of, among other things, all the great ideas that could be hatched by people who'd do their best thinking at two in the morning if they weren't too tired of working all day ...
The View From Rat Lake, John Gierach
Learning isn't easy. It's often not fun. It takes work and discipline. Dancing numbers and singing frogs can't teach arithmetic. Glitzy computer programs can't teach children to treat others as they would have others treat themselves.
Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll
A room without books is a body without a soul
Cicero
The wish to believe, even against evidence, fuels all the pseudosciences from astrology to creationism.
Isaac Asimov
... I lay awake contemplating the horror of having to look for a real job. The notion of earning a living ... The phrase itself was like those other obscene propositions offered on a men's-room wall.
Fred Trumper, The Water-Method Man, John Irving
Blasphemy. A curious concept. The crime of an insignificant mind daring to insult the infinite. How can it even be a misdemeanor when it is most often a worthy attempt to answer questions that can not even be properly asked. Perhaps the only real blasphemy is committed by those who actually think that an omnipotent creator who can toy with the universe would actually be insulted by the expressed thought of one of his finite creations.
Satanic Versus, K. L. Jones
Why is it that those who object to a few witches in children's textbooks are often the same people who have no problem teaching their kids that a creature with horns and a forked tail is trying to lure all of us to eternal torture?
Lee Anderson, letter to the editor,
Los Angeles Times
Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics; I can assure you that mine are still greater.
Albert Einstein
Bibliocharylodis: A dangerous whirlpool of books likely to drown the unwary reader.
If there is magic on this earth, it is contained in water.
Loren Eiseley
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Walter Lippon
While being scolded
the old cat licks his shoulder
Pretending not to hear.
J. W. Hackett
When people want to believe, they require very little in the way of logic and nothing in the way of facts. When they don't want to believe, no amount of proof will persuade them to.
Emprise, Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Faith in immortality was born of the greed of unsatisfied people who make unwise use of the time that nature has allotted us. But the wise man finds his life span sufficient to complete the full circle of attainable pleasures, and when the time of death comes, he will leave the table, satisfied, freeing a place for other guests. For the wise man one human life is sufficient, and a stupid man will not know what to do with eternity.
Epicurus
Your borrowers of books - Those mutilators of collections - Spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
Charles Lamb
The Rev. Dr. Opimian:
You are determined to connect the immaterial with the material world, as far as you can.
Mr. Falconer:
I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then.
Gryll Grange, Thomas Love Peacock
My interest is in the future because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there.
Charles F. Kettering
The great struggle of life is not between good and evil, but between differing ideas of good.
Emprise, Michael P. Kube-McDowell
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
Thomas Paine
It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.
Andrew Jackson
I may not know much, but I know the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.
Lyndon B. Johnson
(on then vice president Richard Nixon)
Jesus had a really bad weekend for your sins.
Mark Gilbert, Saint Paul, Minnesota
The appeal of the macabre tale is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.
H. P. Lovecraft
... wasted nearly an hour arranging my books. First tried putting them in chronological order, since that's the way I hope to read them; but copyright dates can be ambiguous with the older works, and too many authors get broken up. Then tried chronologically by date of author's birth, but I didn't know most of these, and no way to find out. So back to boring old alphabetical order by author, with anthologies bringing up the rear ... Why am I so neurotic about my books? Anyway, they look damned nice, lined up on the shelves.
The Ceremonies, T. E. D. Klein
We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
Robert M. Pirsig
"Think as I think," said a man
"Or You are abominably wicked;
You are a toad.”
And after I had thought of it,
I said, "I will, then, be a toad.”
Stephen Crane
If you wish to be happy for one hour, get intoxicated.
If you wish to be happy for three day, get married.
If you wish to be happy for eight day, kill your pig and eat it.
If you wish to be happy forever, learn to fish.
ancient Chinese proverb
Those who reject biological evolution do so, usually, not out of reason, but out of unjustified vanity.
Isaac Asimov
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Man is but a foundling in the cosmos, abandoned by the forces that created him. Unparented, unassisted and undirected by omniscient or benevolent authority, he must fend for himself, and with the aid of his own limited intelligence find his way about in an indifferent universe.
Carl Becker
I believe everything I can and would believe everything if I could.
Henry James
I'm pissed
not stubbed toe pissed
not mashed twinkie pissed
not even like the bull we frog-gigged
on the ass when I was a kid pissed,
but tongue-tied, throat choking,
knee kicking, ankle biting pissed
because no one cares
that Macbeth may have been the third murderer
that civil disobedience died with the sixties
that Nixon lives in a condo in Manhattan
and I had to cut my hair to teach.
Is there no God?
A.M. Jackson
Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.
Stephen Jay Gould
If today can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers ... Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
Clarence Darrow, Scopes Trial - July, 1925
Alonso of Arragon was wont to say of himself, "That he was a great necromancer, for that he used to ask counsel of the dead": meaning books.
Francis Bacon
Religion considers the Universe deterministic and science considers it probabilistic - an important distinction.
Isaac Asimov
Llamas mate sitting down. That is probably reason enough to study them.
Gamini Seneviratne
You can observe a lot just by watching.
Yogi Berra
"Sport fishing!" he snorted. "Times sure change. Now some folks say our fishing with lines wasn't right. Now, you gotta race around in a fast boat and catch fish no bigger 'an we used for bait and win money. That's sport? That don't make sense. But that's fine. Seems to me that folks should just let other folks be, long as there's fish ...
In-Fisherman, "Zacker on catfishin'"
We slow down
If we ride at 75 miles an hour, we are 75 miles an hour,
and see at 75 miles an hours
We walk so we can see
When we see, there is an infinity, whole galaxies,
cosmos of pictures about us
Therefore, we do not have to travel to Kilamanjaro for a
picture unless we want a vacation
Zen in the Art of Photography, Robert Leverant
A few years ago I experimented with some exotic -- and expensive -- kinds of coffee for fish-camping but found them unacceptable for a number of reasons. For one thing, the cost was prohibitive. Not long ago I spent three-hundred dollars on a fly rod, but an extra seventy-five cents for a pound of coffee still rubs me the wrong way. Once established, priorities must be maintained.
Trout Bum, John Gierach
The Earth is the only home that any of us have - so far anyway.
Isaac Asimov
Illegitimi Non Carborundum : "Don't let the bastards upset you.
unknown Latin scholar
We don't know what's going on here ... We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on there. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.
Pilgrim at Thinker Creek, Annie Dillard
Our villains are all religious. I've run out of patience with religion. We decided we'd been polite about religion for too long - the hell with them! Religion certainly hasn't helped us in the 20th century. All the Mideast is just this cauldron of hate because of God. And what is God? A projection of the masculine image, the father image, so you don't have to be held responsible for your decision.
Joe Haldeman
What was I doing chatting with a little kid? Wasn't there something I should be reading?
Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
A couple of hundred dollars for a fishing pole!?" You'll hear that all the time if you don't keep your mouth shut in certain company. You can talk about the anesthetics and even mention a cane rod will appreciate in value while a new graphite rod will depreciate, but the best thing to do is turn around and say, "9,000.00 for a car? I only paid $500.00 for mine.
Trout Bum, John Gierach
I've never asked my Universe to provide me with purpose. I've always been content to provide that myself ... I think of formal religion as the last respectable expression of the wishful belief that there's magic in the world. I try not to judge the believers on their belief alone. We all hold beliefs where the holding is more important than their objective truth ... There's a magical city named Oz that's watched over by a great wizard. When people come to see him, the wizard appears as an enormous apparition with a propensity for bellowing and belching fire. That tends to inspire both fear and devotion in quantity. But the wizard is actually a quite ordinary man hiding behind a curtain and pulling levers ... I've looked behind the curtain. And once you've seen what's there, the wizard can never scare -- or inspire you -- again. Like Dorothy discovered, if there's any magic in the universe, it's in here ... It's in us, and the dreams we dream -- and always was.
Emprise, Michael P. Kube-McDowell
... One of the problems with religion is it gets mixed up with belief. People are expected to believe the batty things that the scriptures tell you. Religion is much less pernicious when people aren't required to believe it. There are some religious sects which say, "It's OK guys, this is only a set of stories. They're tools for thinking.
If there are gods that are going to lay down commandments, then they're fascist concentration camp guards, basically. Simply the fact that these beings are big does not give them the right to say what's right and what's wrong. Even if they created us, they do not have the right. That stems from a belief which I hold quite passionately, that one of the worst things that ever happened in human history was that moral philosophy got hijacked by religion. It has caused, certainly through the last 2,000 years and probably the last 8,000 years, untold misery. Progress for the future depends to some extent on our being able to take back moral responsibility.
Brian Stableford
William Jennings Bryan: "These gentlemen have no other purpose than ridiculing every person who believes in the Bible.
Clarence Darrow: "We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States, and you know it.
Scopes Trial - July, 1925
Book keeping taught in one lesson - Don't lend them!
Run as we may, we still must read.
Phyllis McGinley
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsell Smith
... I learned that getting oneself properly outfitted wasn't cheap, or even acceptable in some circles ... I can recall the long, serious discussions over the kitchen table at two o'clock in the morning over the relative values of three-hundred dollars' worth of fly tackle ... and, say, getting the leak in the roof fixed.
The fact that I'm single now only illustrates that a sportsman of my caliber can't possibly live with someone whose ducks aren't in a row.
A friend once asked, "How come a guy who dresses in rags and drives a smoky pickup can afford such snazzy tackle?"
"It should be obvious."
Trout Bum, John Gierach
... We humans love that afterglow feeling of just recently having performed at our best, and we sometimes take the opportunity to evaluate how we did it. It's rare for me to pull off something brilliant, either on or off the water, but it always seems to happen on the home stream where the pressure is all but nonexistent; where, if I screw up, it's a simple matter of walking back across the street and cracking a beer. On fabled rivers where enormous fish cavort, I can just forget it. I seem to be at my best when it hardly matters.
Could this mean that ambition is not really the road to success? It's worth considering.
The View From Rat Lake, John Gierach
"Not at all, dear lady. I am a Skeptic."
Trevize said, "I know what the word 'skeptic' means in Galactic, but how do you use the word?"
"Exactly as you do, Councilman. I accept only what I am forced to accept by reasonably reliable evidence, and keep that acceptance tentative pending the arrival of further evidence. That doesn't make us popular.
"Why not?" said Trevize.
"We wouldn't be popular anywhere. Where is the world whose people don't prefer a comfortable, warm and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?"
Foundation and Earth, Isaac Asimov
... In Sinclair's view, book dealing's not a pretty sight - but it's hilarious. The ... dealers are monomaniac and grubby, always looking for the first edition which will make their fortune ... "There's a strong metaphoric connection between dealing books and dealing drugs - the frenzied energies and lunacy of both activities are so obsessional, so total that they wipe out the world.
Andy Richards reviewing White Chapel, Iain Sinclair
The intricacies of the 3-billion-year old system are not necessarily available to, or needed by, our short-term understandings.
Joseph Pearce
... I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.
Annie Dillard
When I get a little money I buy books: and if any if left, I buy food and clothes.
Desiderius Erasmas
Animals are molded by natural forces
They do not comprehend.
To their minds there is no past and no future.
There is only the everlasting
present of a single generation,
its trails in the forest,
its hidden pathways in the air
and in the sea,
There is nothing in the Universe more
alone than man.
He has entered into the strange
world of history...
Loren Eiseley
... but in my own genre, in my own limited way, other SF dealers I meet and mix with - boy, are we a weird bunch. Paranoid. Neurotic. Obsessive (yes that is the word). Capable of acts of great inhumanity in our quest for books. All in all quite strange but wonderful people. And I include myself here; we are all part of some lunatic fringe (in a genre where lunacy, of one kind or another, is the norm), trapped, unable to escape, as if swallowed up by a Malzbergian Black Hole. Whether dealers, collectors, authors, editors, or fans, each locked in his/her own private hell, SF has claimed us utterly. Tom Disch said it all in his poem, On SF - "we are all cripples".
All I can say is (and once again I can only use someone else's words - this time the greatest SF hack of them all); "You crazy sons of bitches, I love you all. Kilgore Trout.
Andy Richards, Christmas catalog, 1987
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.
Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess: What senses do we lack that we can not see and do not hear another world all around us?
Dune, Frank Herbert
... anyone with that number of books could not be all that bad.
The Manuscript Murders, Roy Harley Lewis
Bear in mind Thoreau's advice, "Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!"
Our country's foundation on religious freedoms may have been directly tied to the rights of people to say what they wanted to say, and worship what they wanted to worship, but some churches seem to be among the first places to overlook the need for free speech.
A Sign of the Times,
Danny Alexander and David Cantwell
"My father said to me, 'Bruce, it's time to get serious with your life. This guitar thing is okay as a hobby, but you need something to fall back on. You should be a lawyer' - which I coulda used later on in my career. He says, 'Lawyers, they run the world. But I didn't think they did - and I still don't.
"My mother, she's more sensitive. She thinks I should be an author and write books. But I wanted to play guitar. So my mother, she's very Italian, she say, 'This is a big thing, you should go see the priest.' So I went to the rectory and knocked on the door. 'Hi, Father Ray, I'm Mr. Springsteen's son. I got this problem. My father thinks I should be a lawyer, and my mother, she wants me to be an author. But I got this guitar.'
"Father Ray says, 'This is too big a deal for me. You gotta talk to God,' who I didn't know too well at the time. 'Tell him about the lawyer and the author,' he says, 'but don't say nothin' about that guitar.'
"Well, I didn't know how to find God, so I went to Clarence's house. He says, 'No sweat. He's just outside of town.' So we drive outside of town, way on this little dark road.
"I said, 'Clarence, are you sure you know where we're goin'?' He said, "Sure, I just took a guy out there the other day.' So we come to this little house out in the woods. There's music blasting out and a little hole in the door. I say, 'Clarence sent me,' and they let me in. And there's God behind the drums. On the bass drum, it says: G-O-D. So I said, 'God, I got this problem. My father wants me to be a lawyer and my mother wants me to be an author. But they just don't understand - I got this guitar.'
"God says, 'What they don't understand is that there was supposed to be an Eleventh Commandment. Actually, it's Moses' fault. He was so scared after ten, he said this is enough, and went back down the mountain. You shoulda seen it - great show, the burning bush, thunder, lightning. You see, what those guys didn't understand was that there was an Eleventh Commandment. And all it said was:
LET IT ROCK!'"
Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stone interview,
Aug. 24, 1978
Wandering, dreaming
In fever dreaming, that dreams
wander forever.
Basho
First freedom: The liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience...
John Milton
Borders and boundaries are not just the stuff nation states are made of, they are also the stuff MENTAL STATES are made of. Unless we constantly examine and sincerely challenge these mental states, they are what lead to limiting freedom. Statism can just as well be a STATE OF MIND.
The Scarlet Q, Michael Ziesing
Do we have the right to make people moral?
The Scarlet Q, Michael Ziesing
Let my temptation be a book, which I shall purchase, hold, and keep.
Eugene Field
... No matter how vile you may find what the other guy has to say, there is always a better way to disarm the message than by silencing it.
That's not because words don't hurt. They can be deadly. They can change your life. The point is that the only way to build the kinds of lives that free people ought to have is to allow those words and thoughts to be heard, in all their danger. Get them out in the open, where they can be challenged, endorsed, and, to the extent that they pose social and political riddles, solved. Every other avenue involves deception. And that leads to corruption, and that leads to worse lives for all of us, even for those whose job it is to keep the lid on.
50 Ways to Fight Censorship, Dave Marsh
Of course, if you really wanted to censor something, all you would have to do is ignore it and nobody would care about it.
John Waters
... No book is safe from the censors. What they fear is an open exchange of idea. They're worried that once you slip onto the raft with Huck and Jim, or watch Henry Miller banging against the soft walls of the universe, or experience James Baldwin's Amen Corner, it may change you.
And they're right.
50 Ways to Fight Censorship, Dave Marsh
Bill Moyers suggests a solution that would put the self-appointed moral guardians out of business forever. "Think for yourself," Moyers says. That is precisely what the censors do not want you to do.
Who will set the criteria for the warning labels? How will the terms be defined? Most of the individuals calling for labels point to lyrics that they believe are "offensive" or "indecent. The Supreme Court has spent decades trying to define even the much more restrictive term "obscene. If strictly enforced, record warning codes would require that almost every opera of the past three centuries bear a label. And if not strictly enforced, warning labels are even more outrageously undemocratic.
No More Censorship Defense Fund, Fact Sheet #4
Butterflies, all they know are songs and poetry, and anything else they hear. They mean well, but they can't keep things straight. And why should they? They die so soon.
The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
Whenever someone gets on the soapbox about "good old-fashioned American values," I wonder what they mean. Old-fashioned values like corporal punishments: Second-class citizenship for women, children, and all minorities: All the various soul-murdering techniques that have landed 15 million Americans in detox programs? Yeah, let's definitely get back to those.
Karen Hall
CRAZY ANN AT HER BEST
Dear Ann: I am a person of simple taste. I don't need much to make me happy. A can of beer, two good baseball teams, a freeway and a tank full of gas. A sunny day in early June. A brisk run at sunrise. A pretty girl who smiles when I look her way. A short story by William Faulkner.
None of these will pay the rent so I have to work - which I hate, but I realize a person must be practical. What I need to know is why should I kill myself to meet someone else's definition of success?
To me, success is having enough money to prepare tomorrow's meal. Since I was old enough to talk I was told I was brilliant and would make a lot of money and have the world on a string. So here I am 23, netting $80.00 a week, but I'm genuinely happy and don't want for a thing.
My father (who has ulcers) is ashamed of me. My mother (her life is the beauty salon and clothes) thinks I'm a disgrace. I respect your opinion of my lifestyle. Am I wrong? Are they right? Where do you stand?
Jerry in Yonkers
Dear Jerry: The most revealing part of your letter can be found in four words, "work - which I hate.
Why does a smart guy like you hate work? Don't you realize money is only one of the benefits of labor? If you hate your job and view it as something you must do so you can eat the next day, you are wasting you time and probably ripping off your employer.
This country wasn't built by men who wanted nothing more out of life than a can of beer, a tank full of gas and a story by Faulkner.
And it's a good thing, because if everyone thought as you do we'd still be living in caves. There would be no progress in the sciences or the arts - or in any of the areas that separate us from primitive people.
As a person who has worked very hard for many years (and I didn't need the money) I can tell you, my young friend, that work can be tremendously rewarding and wonderful fun. My idea of hell would a life of leisure. The happiest people I know are the busiest. The most miserable are the idle rich.
I'm sorry about your dad's ulcers but I'll bet your relationship with him has a lot to do with why you hate work. Anything he likes, you probably hate. Too bad you didn't get that problem resolved earlier. Since you are only 23, it's not too late.
The most revealing part of Jerry's letter can be found in four words, "I respect your (Ann Landers') opinion... Yeah, the guy's kinda dippy/smaltzy, but old Ann missed the point entirely.
Censorship cannot eliminate evil. It can only kill freedom.
Ed Morrow and Harry Hoffman,
"An uncensored letter to America's readers"
And reading is the drinking of strange wine.
Harlan Ellison
Box kite hangin' on my bedroom wall waiting for a windy day.
Michael Johnson
Whatever Happened to Vacant Lots?
Sometimes when you look back, it's like boyhood was just one vacant lot after another.
Those small fallow stretches between houses were the furnishings of being young. And you feel a little sad when you think that your son is growing up without them, without the privacy of tall grass, without the sight of his own blue sky going on forever, without the cold, familiar press of the earth against his back, growing warm with his own warmth.
There aren't many vacant lots anymore. The real estate man said they built our house on the last one in our neighborhood. Maybe he thought a vacant lot was a wasted lot.
Besides what kid could raise $15,000 just to keep a lot vacant, a small wild place for small wild people?
The vacant lot was a thousand things. It was the glue that held a young neighborhood together. It was the mutual home of victory gardens, a place to burn leaves, a harmless plot to set up a swing, a toboggan run, a junior ski slope. It could be flooded into an ice rink in winter, paced off for a baseball diamond in summer. It was a badminton court, and a football field.
But builders seldom leave room for vacant lots. Some of them plan parks, keep the grass neatly cut, the walks neatly trimmed. But they seem sterile, meant for baby carriages, not adventure. Swings don't hang from trees, but from metal frames in neat rows. The land is graded level, and there's no such thing as a touchdown run uphill.
Things are well-ordered now, shaped by timetable. The little league ball game on a regulation field has replaced the impromptu sandlot game where everyone could play, and the sides weren't even, and right field was an automatic out - by common agreement, and justice was settled at home plate - without an umpire.
Maybe someday the neighbors will get together, pool their poverty and give one of the house plots on their block back to wilderness again, and to kids. But it's not likely, is it?
John Barbour, AP, Lincoln Journal
(approx. spring of 1967)
Bible: "The Good Book" - one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined.
Ashley Montagu
That's a child-psychology term - a context I dislike. Let's just say he's being a complete bastard.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
Robert M. Pirsig
... Truth, of course pays no attention to political needs, ... or to the needs of any other kind of ideology for that matter. What is true will remain true regardless of all the wishful thinking in the world that would have it otherwise. And the purpose of science is to discover what is absolute and unchangeable, inherent in the fabric of the universe and completely uninfluenced by man's passions or by whether or not we even exist at all.
... Scientific research is the only thing that qualifies as a religion. If religion claims to deal with the absolute and the universal, then what could be more absolute and universal than the things revealed through mathematics and physics? But the systems that are called religions, what do they concern themselves with? Words that a person utters - which god he thinks he talks to. Whom somebody might choose to make love with. What books he reads. Trivial things, things that concern the behavior of people. There's nothing absolute or universal about that! Who do people think they are to imagine that the universe cares about their antics on this little speck of mud? Only people care about such things. But they persuade themselves that their little problems have cosmic importance. .. ... And these are the people who in the same breath accuse scientists of being arrogant! I ask you! Did you ever hear such an absurdity?
... Science isn't a thing at all - like electricity or gravity or atoms. Those are subjects that might be studied in a scientific manner, but science is the process itself - the process of studying them, or anything else, for that matter. It is a process for arriving at conclusions about what is probably true, and what is probably not. That's all. Its end product is simply reliable information. And the problem of knowing what to believe - what is true and what is not - is surely the most important problem that the human race has been grappling with for as long as it has existed. How many isms and ologies have been invented, all purporting to have the answer? And what were their answers worth? ...
Most systems set out to prove or rationalize something that they have made their minds up about already. But that's a hopeless way to proceed if what you really want to know is the truth. Science doesn't do that. Its goal is to understand what's really out there - what the world is really like - and it accepts that whatever the reality is, it will be totally uninfluenced by what you or I might choose to think, or by how many others we might persuade to agree with us. The truth isn't impressed and doesn't care. That's why scientists don't pay much attention to debating skills. We leave those to lawyers and theologians. The eloquence and emotional appeal of the way ideas are presented has nothing to do with whether they're right or not.
... But that's all science is ... Formalized common sense. And since the purpose is to understand the world as it really is, and not to persuade anybody of anything in particular, there is no place for deception, especially unconscious self-deception. You can't get away with fooling yourself. Because all that will happen at the end of the process if you fail to detect your errors is that your aeroplane won't fly. The laws of Nature, you see, can't be deceived. So there is a strong underlying ethical principle woven into the very fabric of the scientific process - something which is all too often overlooked. Wouldn't it be nice if the same were true in certain other fields of human activity.
... So instead of trying to prop up the things that it would like to be true, science does the opposite - it tries everything it can think of to bring its ideas down. That's what experiments are designed to do - to prove theories false. And if the theory survives, it comes out so much the stronger. Hence, like an evolutionary process, which indeed it is, science is all the time testing itself and correcting itself. It thrives on questions, challenges, dissent, and criticism ...
But how pathetic and fragile are the systems of thought that daren't expose their followers to any dissenting view or alternative explanation. Such systems are forced to ban what they have no answers for, and to suppress everything they can't compete with.
The Proteus Operation, James P. Hogan
... Millions of Americans are convinced that the MPAA code isn't censorship because it's "voluntary. They don't know that the code, adopted in 1966, is the result of years of Hollywood's buckling under to pressure brought by censorship groups; that hundreds of American films are shown in Europe with lines of dialogue, individual shots, and whole scenes that Americans never see; or that the ratings are the result of secret MPAA board meetings, whose anonymous members issue ratings (on the G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17, X scale) that they never have to justify or even explain. Yet we're supposed to believe that none of this is "censorship" because it's all "voluntary," a system imposed by the industry itself.
Yet who's doing the volunteering? Not the filmmakers. Ask such famous directors as Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, Phil Alden Robinson, and Philip Kaufman, whose works are shown in complete form only outside the U.S., if they've been "rated" or "censored.
The American Civil Liberties Union calls the MPAA ratings system "a private combination of power to limit the marketplace of ideas," which is a lawyer's way of saying it's blatant censorship, although without the government's direct involvement. In practice, this is among the worst kids of censorship, because it means that any proposed film that might not meet MPAA rating standards probably won't be funded, and therefore, it won't be made ... Any film that displeases the anonymous members of the MPAA board is subject to being whittled down until it does meet approval. To reinforce the delusion that they "aren't censors," the MPAA will allow the same film to be resubmitted for re-rating, but won't tell the filmmakers what they need to change in order to get rid of an X rating ...
Perhaps the ratings system isn't censorship; perhaps it's Kafka, Orwell, or science fiction, It sure isn't the First Amendment in operation.
50 Ways to Fight Censorship, Dave Marsh
... the doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
Robert M. Pirsig
... institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
Robert M. Pirsig
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
Robert M. Pirsig
Only be willing to search for
poetry, and there will be poetry!
My soul, a tiny speck, is my tutor.
Evening sun and fragrant grass are
common things, but with
understanding, they can become
glorious scenes
Yamsoi
Don't run back inside
Darling you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
Oh and that's alright with me
...
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets
Well now I'm no hero
That's understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl
Is beneath this dirty hood
"Thunder Road", Bruce Springsteen
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
Bertrand Russell
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.
Bertrand Russell
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
Bertrand Russell
Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Ambrose Bierce
The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.
Robert G. Ingersoll
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.
Mark Twain
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There are scores of thousands of human insects
who are ready at a moment's notice to reveal the
Will of God on every possible subject.
George Bernard Shaw
Creator: a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
H. L. Mencken
Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce
Lawyer, n. One skilled in the circumvention of the law.
Ambrose Bierce
Pray, n. To ask the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
John Morley
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
Oscar Wilde
Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out any quicker than the Christmas spirit.
Kin Hubbard
I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that I will.
Epitaphs: The Refined Man, Rudyard Kipling
Though I must say religion never caused me to lose a wink of sleep. Indeed, religion's often been the cause of sleep in me.
Helliconia Summer, Brian Aldiss
One of the greatest blessings of virtue is the contempt of death. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to serve. To be ready to die frees us from all bondage and thralldom.
Montaigne
I strongly wish for what I faintly hope;
Like the daydreams of melancholy men,
I think and think in things impossible,
Yet love to wander in that golden maze.
John Dryden
The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of cause.
William James
Hell is the inability to escape from others who prove and prove again to you that you are as they see you.
Sartre
What nonsense all this supposed intuitional truth is, and how comic is the sight of the genuflections made to it by the rational minds who lost their nerve. No, it isn't really comic, it's tragic. There has been at least one other such occasion in history, when Greek secular and rational thought bowed to the mystical aspects of Christianity, and what followed was a Dark Age. We cannot afford another.
Isaac Asimov
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
We pick out a text here and there to make serve our turn ...
John Shelden
Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.
Roger Angell
And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt our strength.
Areopagitica, John Milton
Be always sure you're right--then go ahead!
Davey Crockett
Life’s tough, it’s even tougher if you’re stupid.
John Wayne
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Thoreau
Never cry over spilt milk. It could've been whiskey.
Pappy Maverick
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing should be taken too seriously.
Nicholas Murray Butler
Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.
Harry S. Truman
While you're savin' your face, you're losin' your ass.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
I.F. Stone
There is no use in your walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful near home.
Mark Twain
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear
Mark Twain
We're all scarred to death. I guess that's the price we pay for living in a world where all the price tags end in ninety-nine cents and they sell mortuary plots on billboards on the side of the freeway. What you do is keep on laughing.
Jim Rockford, "The Rockford Files"
All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
Stendhal
Doubt is the beginning of wisdom.
To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals.
Don Schrader (letter to the Albuquerque Journal)
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
Barry Goldwater
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action.
Buckaroo Bonzai
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei
98% of all statistics are made up.
Truth is. Belief is not required.
Gerry Roston
... Everyone seems to have a certain craving for authority, a need to be told how it is instead of having to figure it out for themselves. The former is certainly easier than the latter, which can call for an effort that generates fear and loathing. To be sure, authority is often benevolent; there are times when one reasonably puts one's trust in officials duly elected or appointed by one's society. Moreover, no one can know everything, and there are times when one reasonably puts one's trust in the accumulated knowledge of professionals such as plumbers, automobile mechanics, physicians and scientists.
Many find comfort in the ultimate authority: the Deity. Among them are those who have a deep need not only to rely on such authority but also to convince others that their particular belief is the only acceptable one. In recent years these efforts have taken an interesting turn.
Christianity, like other religions, has its sacred literature. The Holy Bible is a diverse collection of writings from two great religions: Judaism and Christianity. In the days before the rise of the physical and biological sciences Christians took these writings more or less literally. Faced with conflicts between Scripture and the new knowledge, many devout people maintained their faith by regarding the Bible not as literal truth but as human allegory.
Other Christians, mostly those of Protestant denominations in the southern United States, persisted in regarding Scripture as literal truth. Darwin had said in his Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1871: "The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly organized form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to man. ...
A new group has come into the picture calling themselves scientific creationists. Instead of arguing on the theological grounds they argue on "scientific" ones. They maintain that the theory of evolution is only a theory, so that an alternative theory deserves equal attention. That theory is that the world all its living inhabitants were created in the six days of Genesis. (On the seventh day He rested.) Exactly when those days were is not explicitly stated, but they may have been as recent as 10,000 years ago.
At first the technically educated members of the scientific-creationist movement were engineers and scientists in disciplines other than biology, geology and paleontology. In recent years, however, many creationists have pursued studies in those subjects, mostly in fundamentalist colleges. Some have received Ph.D.'s To find evidence supporting their position they do research...
Scientific creationists have cited ... evidence to discredit the evolutionary picture built up over two centuries by physical and biological scientists: that the earth formed 4.6 billion years ago and that living organisms have evolved over a period of 3.5 billion years. The creationists have made their case, however, not in the scientific community but in public forums such as school-board meetings. It has been a remarkable effective approach, because many citizens who would not accept a purely theological picture of the world are impressed by people who maintain that they are scientists and that there are scientific flaws in the evolutionary picture. Not knowing very much about biology and geology, such citizens think it is only fair to yield to a creationist demand for "equal time.
"Equal time" is interesting in its own right. The concept that every citizen has a right to be heard is an ancient one, but the idea that a group opposing the views of another group has a right to equal time to be heard is fairly recent...
What equal time means for creationists is equal representations with evolutionary concepts in textbooks, or at the least the elimination of evolutionary concepts in textbooks. Going before curriculum commissions, notably in California, they have on numerous occasions succeeded in convincing the commissioners to accede to their wishes. Textbook publishers must then do the same or not sell their books. And if textbooks are modified according to creationist demands in one large state, the same textbooks are the only ones available in other states; it would be costly for the publishers to put out separate editions.
Where decisions have gone against them, creationists have resorted to the courts. This points to the heart of the matter, Creationists seek to have their point of view upheld not by scientific institutions but by political and legal ones. Since political and legal institutions are not equipped to decide such issues, the result is confusion and tumult. The whole point of the scientific enterprise is that what is true is to be decided not by opinion, majority or otherwise, but by the reproducibility of observations and experiment and by the usefulness of theory in pointing the way to new observations and new experiments.
When creationists argue that evolution is "only a theory," they disregard two crucial points. First, there is a distinction between the fact of evolution and the theory of evolution... The fact of evolution for which the evidence is overwhelming, is simply that the earth and its living organisms have evolved. The theory of evolution is an explanation of how living organisms evolved through natural selection.
Second, the modern theory of evolution is not simply a single hypothesis. It is a highly integrated body of reasoning, incorporating the facts of evolution (including the facts of paleontology, genetics and population biology). Like all useful theories, it raises questions, which is a way of saying that it does not have all the answers. It is nonetheless one of the great achievements of the human mind, and theological criticisms going back to the time of Darwin are irrelevant to it. Indeed, if one wishes to believe the universe and everything in it were created by a supreme being, there is nothing in the theory of evolution to contradict it.
Seen in this light the scientific-creationist movement would seem to be a social aberration, one hardly worth discussion. But the damage done by such cranks is not trivial. Textbooks are polluted, and the impression is given that an all-or-nothing choice must be made between acceptance of evolution and belief in God.
Michael Cavanaugh of Temple University ... cites a recent survey of students at Ohio State University. Eight percent of them favored the teaching of creationism along with biology. In a way this is a tribute to their fair-mindedness. The trouble is that there is nothing to be taught. One either accepts the literal authority of the Bible or one doesn't.
"Authority Cranks", Flanagan's Version,
Dennis Flanagan
A movie theater manager in South Korea decided that the running time of the Sound of Music was too long, so he shortened it by cutting out all the songs.
Felton & Fowler's Best, Worst & Most Unusual,
Bruce Felton
I don't know whether it's a virtue or a vice in me, but regularly rereading favorite books has always been one of the quasi-religious ceremonies with which I occupy my life.
Fritz Leiber
Ya sure got slim pickin's here. Dogs, nothing but dogs ... Andy, if ya flew a quail through this room, every woman in it would point.
Barney Fife, "Andy Griffith Show"
I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.
Mark Twain
I guess the government that robs its own people earns the future it is preparing for itself.
Mark Twain
Wm Penn ... bought the whole State of PA from them & paid ... $40 worth of glass beads & a couple of second-hand blankets. Bought the whole State for that. Why you can't buy its legislature for twice the money now.
Mark Twain
But no, that would be common sense--and out of place in a government.
Mark Twain
Those burglars that broke into my house recently are in jail, and if they keep on they will go to Congress. When a person starts downhill you can never tell where he's going to stop.
Mark Twain
Reader suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain
We have thrown away the most valuable asset we have--the individual right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he by himself) believes them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.
Mark Twain
... "What's the matter with you?"
"I don't wear suits," said Cooper.
... "What is this, you didn't get this out of your system when you were a teenager? Grown-up men wear suits.
"Not this grown-up man. ... The last time I got a lecture on clothing was in August 1976. I quit that job, too.
"Sit down, sit down. Listen to me for one minute, will you? Sit.
"Sit. Heel. Roll over. I don't do real well on any of them. ... Look, Everybody wants a few luxuries in their life, right? Well, there's a couple of luxuries I decided long ago to permit myself. One is the luxury of never wearing a suit ... A tie is pushing it for me. And two is the luxury of never again taking lectures from anybody. Never. Nobody. It's cost me a little money, maybe, but then luxuries do.
"You're going to die poor with an attitude like that.
... "Maybe. But at least I won't die with that bit jammed between my teeth.
Cooper MacLeish, Bury It Deep, Sam Reaves
(Rocky declares checkmate as Angel walks in. Angel is itch'n to talk to Jim. Jim is refusing to concede defeat, when Angel chimes in with:)
"This here game's over, man! You got to move your boss or Rocky's gonna lay a subpoena on him, and this torpedo, he's gonna smoke your old lady and all your heavies'll be doin' time, 'cept for maybe your mouthpiece and Rocky's sheriff's got him put in a corner. You got nothin' left but punks'n junkies. You're through, Jimmy ... Ya are!"
Angel Martin, "The Rockford Files"
Writing a check with his mouth which his ass couldn't cover.
Taggart Roper, The Next Victim, William Sanders
Welcome as a bastard at a family reunion.
Taggart Roper, The Next Victim, William Sanders
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence.
"What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.
The Mask of Nostradamus,
James "The Amazing" Randi
They're so damn dumb, they wouldn't know how to pour piss out of a boot if the directions were printed on the heel.
Lyndon B. Johnson
It's like necking, it's a hard neck, but there's no going to bed.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Cataloging my virtues won't work either. I hold them to a minimum so that they're easy to keep track of.
Jim Rockford, "The Rockford Files"
Fishermen are usually fairly crazy, and their main goal in life is to grow up to be even crazier yet, so when one of these nuts walks up to me asks why the hell I'm doing what I'm doing, I feel like I'm really out there -- well on my way to becoming the cosmic old fart.
John Gierach
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to go into politics.
Neil Schulman
Zoot: You must spank her well, and after you are done with her, you may
deal with her as you like... and then... spank me!
All: And me! And me too! And me!
Zoot: Yes! Yes, you must give us all a good spanking!
Zoot: And after the spanking, the oral sex!
Galahad: Well I could stay a bit longer...
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
Man is a feeling creature, and because of it the greatest in the universe. He learned too late for himself that men have to find their own way, to make their own mistakes. There can't be any gift of perfection from outside ourselves. When men seek such perfection they find only death, fire, loss, disillusionment and the end of everything that's gone forward. Men have always sought an end to our misery but it can't be given, it has to be achieved. There is hope, but it has to come from inside, from Man himself.
Paul Nelson, "It Conquered the World"
...he was about as credible as a televangelist claiming a hotline to God and requesting help with the phone bill.
Arly Hanks, Mischief in Maggody, Joan Hess
Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy. And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.
Brother Maynard, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God.
John Milton
Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valor pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, the HELL with you!
Conan, "Conan the Barbarian"
... I would love it if there were aliens here, even if they are a little short, sullen, grumpy, and sexually preoccupied. So, if they are harbingers of an advanced civilization and they're here for heaven's sake, let's find out about them. My mind is open.
...People make mistakes, people misapprehend natural phenomena, people look for attention, money, or fame. People sometimes experience alternative states of consciousness--hallucinations are very common in human beings, including normal people. And with that as the background, to really believe one of these cases you need really good physical evidence. And there is none.
Carl Sagan
Top 10 Reasons Why Beer Is Better Than Jesus
10. No one will kill you for not drinking Beer.
9. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.
8. Beer has never caused a major war.
7. They don't force Beer on minors who can't think for themselves.
6. When you have a Beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.
5. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured over his brand of Beer.
4. You don't have to wait 2000+ years for a second Beer.
3. There are laws saying Beer labels can't lie to you.
2. You can prove you have a Beer.
1. If you've devoted your life to Beer, there are groups to help you stop.
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson
There's a world of difference between wishful thinking and critical thinking, Angels and auras ... UFOs and unicorns ... miracles and magic ... These things may entertain us. They may even speak to some of our deepest wishes. But they don't really help us understand how the world works.
Skeptical Inquirer, March/April, 1995
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, 1759.
I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
E. M. Forster
Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
Lily Tomlin
Arthur C. Clarke
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
James Madison
You know your country is dying when you have to make a distinction between what is moral and ethical, and what is legal.
John De Armond,
Performance Engineering Magazine, 1994
Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.
Harry S. Truman
It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead.
Thomas Jefferson
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
John Adams
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.
Thomas Jefferson
There are no bad haircuts in cyberspace.
Dave Barry
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln
Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
Harry S. Truman
If assholes were airplanes, the place where those fellers are from must be an airport.
In-Fisherman, Zacker
Did you learn how to think or how to believe?
father of consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who asked the young Nader this while questioning him on what he had learned in school one day.
Time flies so fast after youth is past that we cannot accomplish one-half the many things we have in mind, or indeed one-half our duties. The only safe and sensible plan is to make other things give way to the essentials, and the first of these is flyfishing.
Theodore Gordon
It is a great mistake to try to cure a man of paranoia, for it gives him just as clear an understanding of the innards of the universe as Psychology or religion.
I See by my Outfit, Peter S. Beagle
Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.
Virtue in the middle, said the Devil, as he sat down between two lawyers.
Danish proverb
When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty;
When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace;
When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice.
Lin Yutang
It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.
Vice President Dan Quayle
Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.
Vice President Dan Quayle
Speaking as a man, it's not a woman's issue. Us men are tired of losing our women.
Vice President Dan Quayle
talking about breast cancer
Labs don't know the meaning of the word 'fear,' nor often the meaning of the words: 'No,' 'Come,' 'Sit,' and 'Stay off the furniture you knothead!'
Just Labs, Steve Smith
Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac?
He kept himself awake at night wondering if indeed there was a DOG.
...he was frantic, like a visiting Methodist preacher who'd just realized the head of the household had scooped up the last fried chicken leg.
The Two-Bear Mambo, Joe R. Lansdale
I talk a lot to me dawg - and them bastard crows.
Australian bush talk
If we could censor Darwin, what other kinds of knowledge could also be censored? Who would do the censoring? Who among us is wise enough to know which information and insights we can safely dispense with, and which will be necessary ten or a hundred or a thousands years into the future?...But censoring knowledge, telling people what they must think and what ideas are impermissible, which lines of evidence may not be pursued, is the aperture to thought police, foolish and incompetent decision-making, and long-term decline.
The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?
Ronald Reagan, campaign speech, 1980
Ubi dubium ibi libertas:
Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
Latin proverb
There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
George Washington, address to Congress,
January 8, 1790
In theological discussion with religious leaders, I often ask what their response would be if a central tenet of their faith were disproved by science. What I put this question to the current, Fourteenth, Dalai Lama, he unhesitatingly replied as no conservation or fundamentalist religious leaders do: In such a case, he said, Tibetan Buddhism would have to change.
Even, I asked, if it's a really central tenet, like (I searched for an example) reincarnation?
Even then, he answered.
However--he added with a twinkle--it's going to be hard to disprove reincarnation.
The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.
Thomas Jefferson
Let a wave of intolerance wash over you...Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation...We are called by God to conquer this country...We don't want pluralism.
Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue,
August 1993
Religion seems to bring out the worst in mob mentality.
Arly Hanks, Miracles in Maggody, Joan Hess
Even today, some American high school biology curricula are still giving equal time to special creation (and to a subject oxymoronically called "scientific creationism"). Should time also be devoted in school geography curricula to the evidence for the proposition that the Earth is flat?--a view clearly held by the authors of the Bible and still supported by fringe advocacy groups. Both special creation and the flat Earth hypothesis were reasonable scientific guesses in the sixth century B.C., when Genesis was compiled. They are no longer.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors,
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
I detest all systems that depreciate human nature. If it be a delusion that there is something in the constitution of man that is venerable and worthy of its author, let me live and die in that delusion, rather than have my eyes opened to see my species in a humiliating and disgusting light. Every good man feels his indignation rise against those who disparage his kindred or his country, why should it not rise against those who disparage his kind?
Thomas Reid (letter of 1775)
I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons.
Will Rogers
Vegetarian is an Indian word for lousy hunter.
Red Green
A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!"
"However," said the universe, "The fact has not created in me asense of obligations."
Stephen Crane
From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
Michel de Manteigne
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
Olin Miller
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
Descartes
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.
Alfred Adler
Examine what is said, not him who speak.
Arabian proverb
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Mark Twain
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
Mark Twain
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Mark Twain
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate-it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity.
Albert Einstein
I exist as I am, that is enough.
Walt Whitman
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
Wallace Stevens
If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy
Red Green
For much of my life, I have been driven by a compulsion to know Truth. As a consequence, I have found much to doubt.
The Valourist, W. Luther Jett
Beliefs are not the same as facts. Indeed, the stronger the belief, the less likely that it is grounded in fact. Strive to distinguish between belief and fact in all that you do.
The Valourist, W. Luther Jett
I once said cynically of a politician, "He'll double-cross that bridge when he comes to it.
Oscar Levant
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
H.L. Mencken
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
Aldous Huxley
I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?
Ronnie Shakes
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi
The Dominant Life Form on the planet Earth is the DNA molecule. This molecule has managed to create and breed a host of lesser animal and plant life forms for its use in travel, procreation and entertainment. One of these life forms has developed what it calls 'consciousness', and has taken to calling itself 'Man'. It has been up to no good for 100,000 Earth years.
The Misanthropyst (web site)
A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
Granville Hicks
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum" (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
Ambrose Bierce
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
Harry S. Truman
What luck for rulers that men do not think.
Adolf Hitler
Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?
Tom Clancy
If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides.
Old Yiddish proverb
Neither saint nor sinner, just human.
Larry Dawson
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not! But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am!
Monty Python
A dog: a liberal. He wants to please everybody.
William Kunstler
Look for the evidence,
Look for the proof.
Or else you're acting
Like an awful goof.
Gullible's Travels, Steve Allen
Science is nothing more than the search for knowledge.
Steve Allen
Now, when men kill each other in an attempt to defend ideas proposed by Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, or Donald Duck, that's tragic enough. But when their daily bloody slaughters are perpetrated because they imagine that they are doing God's work--well, you want jokes? That is the supreme joke of history.
Steve Allen
Truth and facts are very precious things... The Noble Price is awarded to people who pursued truth wherever it led. Scientists like Galileo conducted themselves heroically and suffered terribly for it. So anytime we become careless with the truth, we should worry.
Steve Allen
I regard religious experience as a very risky thing to do because it can destroy your brain in a rapid way, but if I had a backup copy--.
Marvin Minsky
If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around.
Texas Bix Bender
No matter who says what, don't believe it if it don't make sense.
Texas Bix Bender
Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than friends.
Alexander Pope
We give dogs love we can spare, time we can spare, and room we can spare. In return, dogs give us their all. It’s the best deal man has ever made.
Margery Facklam
Politics = Poli = many, tics = blood sucking insects
The first part of the human story is simple: We rose out of the primeval muck to peer at the stars. The second part of the story has yet to be written.
What is the path? There is no path.
Neils Bohr, Physicist
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am stuck in the middle with you.
Stealer's Wheel, "Stuck in the Middle With You"
The true scientist revises his beliefs to fit the evidence. The true believer revises the evidence to fit his beliefs.
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
Charles Bukowski
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
Stephen Roberts
Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
anonymous
No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.
George Bush
Why be born again, when you can just grow up?
I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.
Original wording to the Pledge of Allegiance
Frisbeetarianism, n.: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
I don't mind those who are born again, just as long as they don't think that they get twice as many rights.
Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt.
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
Vique's Law: A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
Camus
Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologica
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
John Buchan
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
Thomas Szasz
My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.
Bertrand Russel
You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalian 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.
Pat Robertson, "The 700 Club", January 14, 1991
Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on.
Anonymous
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
George Bernard Shaw
Imagine encouraging [a child] to participate in such 'twisted' rituals and worshiping of tortuous crucifixes and such like this from birth. No wonder we have so many hateful and sadistic people in our society.
Brent Allsop
A good rule for interpretation is: 'If the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense lest you come up with nonsense'"
Anonymous
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
Susan B. Anthony
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.
Francis Bacon
I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim.
Tammy Faye Bakker
We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There's a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody's values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to
believe.
Gary Bauer, religious-right Family Research Council
Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the kind of life he led there before joining the family circle.
Samuel Beckett
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
Ambrose Bierce
As a man can drink water from any side of a full tank, so the skilled theologian can wrest from any scripture that which will serve his purpose.
Bhagavad Gita [The Lord's Song] (250 B.C.-A.D. 250)
Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.
Ambrose Bierce
Christian, n.: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired
book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
Ambrose Bierce
Infidel: In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.
Ambrose Bierce
I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Religion divides us, while it is our human characteristics that bind us to each other.
Sir Hermann Bondi
...Any organization could profit from a 10-year-old member with enough strength of character to refuse to swear falsely.
New York Times editorial, 12/12/93, on the Boy Scouts' refusing membership to Mark Welsh, who would not sign a religious oath
If we have to give up either religion or education, we should give up education.
William Jennings Bryan
I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings. Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels.
Pearl S. Buck
If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little Electric Chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
Lenny Bruce
No myth of miraculous creation is so marvelous as the face of man's evolution.
Robert Briffault (1876-1948)
God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.
Luis Buquel
To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues on the part of the asserter either gross ignorance or else wilful fraud.... The system of morals expounded in the New Testament contains no maxims which had not been previously enunciated.
Henry Thomas Buckle
If, in any culture, children are taught, 'We are all equally unworthy in the sight of God-
If, in any culture, children are taught, 'You are born in sin and are sinful by nature-
If children are given a message that amounts to 'Don't think, don't question, believe -
If children are given a message that amounts to 'Who are you to place your mind above that of the priest, the minister, the rabbi? -
If children are told, 'If you have value it is not because of anything you have done or could ever do, it is only because God loves you -
If children are told, 'Submission to what you cannot understand is the beginning of morality -
If children are instructed, 'Do not be "willful", self-assertiveness is the sin of pride -
If children are instructed, 'Never think that you belong to yourself -
If children are informed, 'In any clash between your judgement and that of your religious authorities, it is your authorities you must believe, -
If children are informed, 'Self-sacrifice is the foremost
virtue and the noblest duty -
- then consider what will be the likely consequences for the practice of living consciously, or the practice of self-assertiveness, or any of the other pillars of healthy self-esteem.
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Branden
The idea that a good God would send people to a burning Hell is utterly damnable to me. The ravings of insanity! Superstition gone to seed! I don't want to have anything to do with such a God. No avenging Jewish God, no satanic devil, no fiery hell is of any interest to me.
Luther Burbank
All my work in the field of science and research has come through a change in my earlier opinions on religion. Growth is the law of life. Orthodoxy is the death of scientific effort.
Luther Burbank
Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
John Burroughs (1837-1921)
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler
I do not believe in revealed religion -- I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without speculating on another....
Lord Byron (1778-1824),
Letter to Rev. Francis Hodgson, 1811
It does not pay a prophet to be too specific.
L. Sprague de Camp
I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
George Carlin
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
Noam Chomsky
Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior?"
NY State Senator James Donovan,
speaking in support of capital punishment
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Joseph Conrad
I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.
Clarence Darrow
You will find men like him in all of the world's religions. They know that we represent reason and science, and, however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not necessarily through any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy a religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.
Democritus
God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment/execution. When god says the same we call him "loving" and build churches in his honor."
William C. Easttom II
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
Steve Eley
AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters.
Jerry Falwell
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; Or he can, but does not want to; Or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, Then how come evil in the world?
Epicurus, 350-?270 BC
Do not allow the Church or State to govern your thought or dictate your judgment.
Matilda Joslyn Gage
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.
The Day before the Revolution, Ursula K. LeGuinn
Die verfluchte Huhre, Vernunft.
(The damned whore, Reason.)
Martin Luther
The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.
Martin Luther
Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities, as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads....
Martin Luther
The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.
Frank Zappa
...They tried to make me go to Catholic school, too. I lasted a very short time. When the penguin came after me with a ruler, I was out of there.
Frank Zappa
We didn't send you to Washington to make intelligent decisions. We sent you to represent us."
Kent York, Baptist minister to US Rep. Bill Sarpalius
Many persons who claim that they are "clothed with righteousness" do not seem to have got very good fits.
Lemuel K. Washburn
A miracle is not an explanation of what we cannot comprehend..
Lemuel K. Washburn
God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
Voltaire
The minister of the Gospel is really the yardstick by which the nation measures its morals.
Jimmy Swaggart
Man is a dog's ideal of what God should be.
Andre Malraux
Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
Friedrich Nietzche
Why can't the Jews and Arabs just sit down together and settle this like good Christians?
Overheard in Congressional debate
Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!
George Bernard Shaw
All this writing about going to the Moon is utter bilge--it would cost as much as a major war.
Richard Woolley (astronomer, 1956)
I find it hard to comprehend why fundamentalist Christians, who believe the Bible's miracles to be actual events, would even try to find natural explanations for what the Bible clearly describes as divine supernatural phenomena.
Martin Gardner, "The Star of Bethlehem"
...Creationism, perhaps the most pernicious of the intellectual perversions now afflicting the American public. Though I am the last person to advocate laws of blasphemy, surely nothing could be more anti-religious than to deny the evidence so clearly written in the rocks for all who have eyes to see! Can anyone believe that God is responsible for a cruel and pointless hoax by forging billions of years of prehistory? It is indeed a national tragedy that millions of children have been prevented from appreciating the awesome scale--in time as well as space--of our wonderful universe, owing to the cowardice of politicians and school boards.
Arthur C. Clarke
If I were a religious person, I would consider Creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer, who has created the whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of fooling mankind? And, though I do not necessarily agree with the Catholic paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin's advocacy of evolution as a major proof of the glory of God, his attitude is both logical and inspiring.
A Creator who, right back at the beginning of time, laid the foundations for the entire future is far more awe-inspiring and deserving of worship than a clumsy tinkerer who constantly modifies billions of his creations and throws away whole species because of defective engineering.
Arthur C. Clarke
Science is my territory, but science fiction is the landscape of my dreams.
Freeman Dyson
One can sympathize with the researchers in the field (SETI), who have had their modest budgets cut by Congress. I once gave them the advice: "Despite disappointments and false alarms, continue the search for intelligent life in Washington."
Arthur C. Clarke
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base.
Dave Barry
Have you ever noticed.... Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
George Carlin
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Oscar Wilde
Books may well be the only true magic.
Alice Hoffman
There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them: those we spent with a favorite book.
Marcel Proust
Books had instant replay long before televised sports.
Ben Williams
The library is the temple to learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.
Carl Rowan
Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.
Lady Bird Johnson
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury
"Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.
Francois Mauriac
The simple truth, extraterrestrial life by definition is not conveniently located.
Joel Achebach
Women, I've never me one yet that's as reliable as a horse.
John Wayne, "North to Alaska"
If there are benefits to be gained from using computers in our schools, they have not yet been realized. “If computers make a difference,” says Samuel Salva, former executive director of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, “it has yet to show up in achievement.” Computers will probably not improve learning if technology integration proceeds at its current frantic pace. As for teachers, computers have simply added to their already exhausting workload and worsened funding problems.
The Child and the Machine,
Alison Armstrong and Charles Casement
I swung from he hip, caught him with a solid left just above he belt, and he dropped like a congressman's ethics.
The Bookman's Promise, John Dunning
Since ancient times, the philosopher’s secret has always been this: We know that God does not exist, or, at least, if he does, he’s utterly indifferent ot our individual affairs -- but we can’t let the rabble know that; it’s the fear of God, the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward, that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own.
Calculating God, Robert J. Sawyer
Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward.
Patricia Sampson
The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
Henry Cate VII
It ain't lying if it's true.
unknown
Just trust yourself then you will know how to live.
Goethe
I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.
Beryl Pfizer
I'm not buying my kids an encyclopedia. Let 'em walk to school like I did.
Yogi Berra
GOD IS "ONLY A THEORY"
I've given more thought to the creationists demand that evolution be stricken from public school science classes, or that it be taught side-by-side with creationism because "evolution is only a theory" and "no one was there to witness the creation" so we cannot say for sure what really happened.
I have come to the conclusion that what's fair is fair, and that the creationists have a good point. After all, isn't education all about hearing both sides of an issue? And they are correct, no one was there to witness the creation, so any ideas about who or what caused the creation can only be speculative theories and therefore never provable.
Therefore, I am certain that Ministers, Priests, Rabbis, and religious leaders of all sects will be pleased to read the following disclaimer to their respective congregations every Sunday morning, or before any sermon delivered:
Good morning ladies and gentlemen, God bless and welcome to [FILL IN THE NAME OF YOUR CHURCH, TEMPLE, MOSQUE, OR CENTER OF WORSHIP HERE]. This morning we are going to talk about the creation of the universe and the origins of life on Earth. According to the Bible, Genesis 1:1-3: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, LEt there be light: and there was
light."
Now, it is important for us to understand that no one was actually present at the creation so we don't really know what happened. Genesis 1:1-3 is only a theory, and as such cannot be treated as fact. And it is only fair that I share with you that there are other theories of the creation. For example, some Sumerians and Babylonians, Gilbert Islanders, Koreans, and Greeks believed that the world was created from the parts of a slain monster; some Zuni Indians, Cook Islanders, and Tahitians have a theory that the world was created by the interaction of primordial parents; and some Japanese, Samoan, Persian, Chinese, and Hindu have a theory that the world was generated from an egg." And, of course, there is that dogma being foisted upon us by the liberal media and intelligentsia, the theory of evolution.
As for the origins of human life, that is spelled out in Genesis 1:27: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Of course, not only was no one present to witness this act, except for Adam and Eve after they were created, I should point out that this theory has a counter theory in Genesis 2:7, where "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." In this theory Adam is all alone without a mate, so in Genesis 2:21-22 "the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."
Since everyone here was blessed by the almighty with a brain that thinks, I will allow you to decide which theory is the correct theory of the creation of humans, Genesis 1 or Genesis 2. Weigh the evidence and decide for yourselves. You be the judge.
Oh, there is one other minor detail. Adam and Eve begat Cain and Abel, and as you all know Cain, as firstborns are wont to do to their later born siblings who might cut into their limited parental resources, slew him. That left Adam, Eve, and Cain as the only humans on the entire Earth. But in Genesis 4:17 we read that "Can knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch."
Now, I don't mean to burden you with more of the liberal media's fascination with smut and porn, but I think as created beings endowed with intelligence and critical thinking skills blessed to us by the good Lord, it might be reasonable to ask just who it was that Cain "knew." Unless Adam was himself blessed with both types of reproductive organs, or Cain was capable of parthenogenesis, then we are left with the theory that Cain "knew" his mother.
But that's just a theory, and as we all know, theories are just wild guesses and should not be taken seriously.
Michael Shermer
As the Age of Reason came along, and then the Industrial Revolution, science became in some ways our new mythology; scientists were the alchemists, the sorcerers, the wizards. They could do strange, magical things, create wonders we did not understand that were marvelous but could also be terrifying. We couldn’t take the marvelous way across the sea to a land full of wonder like Lilliput anymore, because we knew it wasn’t there, but we could go to Mars or the next star system and find whatever the writer could create there. We didn’t have any belief in elves or angels anymore, but we believed in aliens instead. You can see the parallels between science fiction and fantasy. People used to see elves in the woods; now they see UFOs. It’s probably the same kind of people who believe as their ancestors did, and those beliefs fulfill the same sort of needs.
Fiction fulfills a need. Is it truth, or is it a sort of necessary lie? Maybe fiction tells us necessary lies. It depends on whether you view the world as being structured or not. You’re getting into quasi-religious areas here. I wrote a story back in the ‘70s, ‘The Way of Cross and Dragon’ (which won a Hugo). It was a science fiction story, far future, told from the viewpoint of a futuristic inquisitor for the interstellar Catholic Church. He uncovered a heresy, and behind that heresy was a secret society I called the Liars. I’ve always wanted to do more stories concerning the Liars and expand on some things I just briefly touched on in that. That society’s members were engaged in telling and propagating and making as convincing as possible certain necessary lies. I think we do have necessary lies.
God is a necessary lie, because it’s very frightening to think this is all there is. There’s nothing but this little span of life, and then it ends and it’s over forever — our consciousness is not reborn. It doesn’t become a cow or a tree, it doesn’t go to heaven and play a harp, it’s just over. That’s a terrifying concept. The idea that we transcend death is always there. Even with the most outspoken atheists, if a friend dies, they’ll use a phrase like ‘Well, if he’s anywhere,’ or ‘I hope he’s smiling down.’ It comes out, this need to think our loved ones and our friends are there.
George R. R. Martin, Locus interview, 1-01
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
Andy Rooney
Teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.
George Bush, Jr.
I hope I am not giving offense -- it has never been my desire to be critical of your race. But it does astound me that you have both tattoo parlors and abortion clinics. The former -- businesses devoted to permanently altering one’s appearance--imply that humans can predict what they will want decades in the future. The latter -- facilities to terminate pregnancies --imply that humans often change their minds over timeframes as short as a few months.
Well, many pregnancies are unintentional. People have sex because it’s fun; they do it even when they don’t wish to procreate.
Do you not have methods of contraception? If you do not, I am sure Lablok could devise some for you.
No, no. We have many methods of birth control.
Are they effective? asked Hollus.
Yes.
Are they painful?
Painful? No.
The Wreeds would say that abortion, then, should simply not be a moral issue because simple precautions would obviate the need to discuss it at all, except in a handful of unusual cases. If one can easily choose not to get pregnant, then surely that is the proper exercising of choice. If you can avoid a difficult moral problem, such as when life begins, they why not simply do so?
But there are cases of rape and incest...
Ah. But surely these are exceptional occurrences. And possibly the best moral lesson my own people have learned during our association with the Wreeds is that general principles should not be based on exceptional cases. That one insight has enormously simplified our legal system.
Well, then, what do you do in exceptional cases? What should yo do in the case of a rape resulting in pregnancy?
Obviously the woman had no chance to proactively exercise her reproductive rights via contraception; therefore, clearly she should be permitted to regain control of her own biology as fully and completely as she desires. In such cases, abortion is obviously an acceptable option; in other, birth control is clearly the preferred route.
But there are humans who believe artificial birth control is immoral.
...You humans do seem to go out of your way to manufacture moral issues.
Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
There's a great deal of nonsense now about how our children can't read but then how could they in their terms of imitative behavior if their parents don't read and there are no books in the house? If books aren't treated as beloved objects like the sports page or the television why would a child wish to read? You wonder how disgustingly low-paid teachers must spend their lives trying to overcome parental stupidity, but then in our money culture everything is considered merry and bright if the parents show up for their often dismal jobs on time.
Jim Harrison
The trouble with the world is that the stupid or unthinking are so sure of themselves while the wise or intelligent are full of doubt.
Bertrand Russell
WTC site prayer launches criticism
The Associated Press
OMAHA -- The newly elected president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has come under fire for praying with leaders of other denominations and faiths after a Sept. 19 tour of the World Trade Center ruins.
The Rev. Gerald B. Kieschnick was installed Sept. 8 as president of the Missouri Synod -- Nebraska's third-largest denomination, with 117,00 members.
Kieschnick's critics say he ignored Lutheran beliefs by worshiping with other religions and Christian denominations.
At least one, the Rev. Georg Williams of Zion Lutheran Church in Ainsworth, has called for Kieschnick to resign. Two other pastors - one from Missouri and one from Minnesota -~ have asked the Missouri District president, the Rev. James Kalthoff, to start the process of revoking Kieschnick's membership in the synod.
The action, some say, could cause the Missouri Synod to split in a renewal of the moderate-conservative struggle that ended with the 1976 secession of more than 100,000 members nationwide.
Kieschnick and the Rev. David Benke, Atlantic District president, are under fire for singing and praying with leaders of the more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America after the attacks site tour.
On Sept. 23 Benke gave a prayer at "A Prayer for America" at Yankee Stadium, which included leaders of other Christian bodies and non-Christian faiths.
Kieschnick has said he supports and gave prior approval to Benke's participation.
During an Oct. 28 visit to Omaha, Kieschnick said a statement endorsed by the July convention allows Lutheran pastors to pray, speak and read the Bible at "civic events" and perhaps in other unusual circumstances.
"If we're to be a confessional church, our confession needs to be heard," Kieschnick said.
The synod's 1847 constitution demands that its congregations and pastors reject both the mingling of Christian and non-Christian beliefs and worshipping with Christians who don't interpret the Bible according to the 1580 Book of Concord.
If Missouri Synod pastors worship in other churches or offer prepared prayers or messages with non-Christians, it becomes "liturgical and erroneous and very much anti-Christian," Williams said.
Lincoln Journal Star, 12-3-01
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg trials
That is why I am not religious. If and when we do learn the true secret of the universe, some kind of religion will be there to hide it. To cover it up. To persecute and shred, to burn and destroy. They stay in business by keeping us in the Dark Ages.
The Bookman's Promise, John Dunning
Life has taught me one thing ... The faster you go, the more you miss. ... We're all pretty much heading for a brick wall, the question is how hard do you want to hit it. ... Anything worth doin', it's worth doin' slow.
Red Green
I spend almost as much time figuring out what’s wrong with my computer as I do actually using it.
Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll
We program computers, but the computers also program us.
Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll
Interactive computer entertainment gives you a choice of many different outcomes, all preprogrammed. The experience is about as interactive as a candy machine.
Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
(When all else fails, play dead.)
Red Green
Man's Prayer
I'm a man...
But I can change...
If I have to...
I guess.
Red Green
If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.
Red Green
A tie is a noose and, inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
He was too big too big to be a lap dog and too stupid to be a garden ornament.
The Egyptologist, Arthur Phillips
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
Lyndon B. Johnson
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
Sir Richard Francis Bacon
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
Albert Einstein
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political ideas.
Aldous Huxley
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Carl Sagan
Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?
Jay Leno
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
Ashley Montague
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
Blaise Pascal
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide
The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.
Phillip Lopate
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
Edward Abbey
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. Clarke
We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.
Maurice Maeterlinck
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H.L. Mencken
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
George Bernard Shaw
It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
David Brin
I couldn't see his feet cause the reception desk was in the way. I was certain he'd be wearing tan boat shoes. I made a substantial bet with myself he was wearing them without socks. This was a man who wallowed in the Yuppie dream like a pig in shit.
Jack Reacher, The Killing Floor, Lee Child
Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it’s just a goddamned piece of paper!
George W. Bush
Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Government is a body of people usually, notably ungoverned.
Shepherd Derrial Book, "Firefly"
One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in.
Francis Jourdain
If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France
A reasonable man adapts himself to suit his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Theodore Roosevelt
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
Bertrand Russell
Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
Don Hirschberg
Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power.
Salmon Rushdie
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Epicurus
I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.
Thomas Jefferson
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
Douglas Adams
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg
An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
Albert Einstein
The United States is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles and beliefs.
President George W. Bush,
43rd President of the United States
The Government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.
John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Bertrand Russell
If you are going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
Bertrand Russell
First, it was not a strip bar, it was an erotic club. And second, what can I say? I'm a night owl.
Marion Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC
People live, people die. As long as they do both properly there’s no reason for regret.
Jack Reacher, Tripwire, Lee Child
No police. They mess with me, they answer to me.
Jack Reacher, Tripwire, Lee Child
Andy Taylor: (Brisco is getting dressed for Charlene’s wedding) Hold still, Mr. Darling, while I put on your tie.
Briscoe Darling: Ever since I saw a hangin’, I been nervous about wearin’ one of these things.
"Andy Griffith Show"
I can’t deal with her when she had a hot iron in her hand and Jesus in her ear.
Crabman,
“My Name Is Earl”
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they haven chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money.
George Carlin
The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians, it creates a hostile work environment.
George Carlin
Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them’s making a poop, the other one’s carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge.
Jerry Seinfeld
Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
E. O. Wilson
If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
E. O. Wilson
Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all? Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
E. O. Wilson
===================================
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, Edward Abbey
Reason has seldom failed because it has been seldom tried.
Whatever we cannot understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.
The missionaries goes forth to Christianize the savages--as if the savages weren’t dangerous enough already.
Belief in God? I believe in rock: this apodictic rock beneath my feet.
Proverbs save us the trouble of thinking. What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.
Every man should be his own guru; every woman her own gurette.
Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and the hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward.
Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
The world is older and bigger than we are. This is a hard truth for some folks to swallow.
According to the current doctrines of mystico-scientism, we human animals are really and actually nothing but organic patterns of nodular energy composed of collocations of infinitesimal points oscillating on the multi-dimensional coordinates of the space-time continuum. I’ll have to think about that. Sometime. Meantime, I’m going to gnaw on this sparerib, drink my Blatz beer, and contemplate the `a posteriori coordinates of that young blonde over yonder, the one in the tennis skirt, tying her shoelaces.
I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere.
I do not believe in personal immortality; it seems so unnecessary. Show me one man who deserves to live forever.
Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.
I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace... The rest is only hearsay.
Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.
The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power or means to coerce others.
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hard-headed realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.
Freedom begins between the ears.
There has got to be a God; the world could not have become so fucked up by chance alone.
If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture--that is immortality enough for me. And as much an anyone deserves.
To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.
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