"This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
-- George Bernard Shaw "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
-- Arthur C. Clarke "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison."
-- Henry David Thoreau "People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one."
-- Leo J. Burke "A single moment of understanding can flood a whole life with meaning."
-- Unknown "Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs."
-- Denis Diderot "I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."
-- Solomon Short "It seems that she's addicted to you in a certain sense."
-- Amarao, Furi Kuri "Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate."
-- F.M. Knowles "Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'."
-- Michael McClary "...a seemingly insignificant pawn can sometimes spoil the most elaborate checkmate"
-- Charles Solomon "The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it."
-- Warren Buffett "What Microsoft is doing is targeting specific markets it wants to be in, copying the products of the leading companies as close as it legally can and giving them away through one means or another, usually by bundling it as part of one existing product. It's called the 'fast follower' strategy. Microsoft is not about innovation. It never has been, and everyone knows that."
-- Richard Shaffer, Technologic Partners "The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."
-- Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions (p. 215) "Energy is the glue that binds our society together."
-- Matt Simmons "Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying."
-- Fran Lebowitz "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
-- Martin Luther King Jr. "If you believe in me, I'll believe in you."
-- Lewis Carrol, Through The Looking Glass "[I]f I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul."
-- Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir "Rough diamonds are sometimes mistaken for pebbles."
-- Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, p. 147. "Many people lose their tempers merely from seeing you keep yours."
-- Frank Moore Colby "The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind."
-- Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, XIX "The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy."
-- Alfred North Whitehead "A man's own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health."
-- Francis Bacon "...a child may be made to believe a falsehood and die in support of it, and therefore there can be no merit in a [mere] belief. We find in the various sects of Christendom, among the Jews, Mohammedans, Hindoos, in fact, throughout the entire world, that children are made to believe in the creed in which they are brought up....
Bibles are always written so obscure as to require priestly interpreters... [whose] means of salvation is to strangle every one they come in contact with who does not believe as they do; and the more Infidels and heretics they strangle the surer their reward in heaven, and the most pious and conscientious among them try to bring out the most human sacrifices."
-- Ernestine L. Rose, as quoted in American Life (p. 107) by Carol A. Kolmerten "...years of love have been forgot / In the hatred of a minute"
-- Edgar Allan Poe, "To ___" "If you wish to taste the ground, feel free to attack me."
-- Kenshin Himura, Rurouni Kenshin "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
-- W.B. Yeats, "He Wishes For The Clothes of Heaven" "I bring you with reverent Hands
The books of my numberless dreams..."
-- W.B. Yeats, "A Poet To His Beloved" "A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience."
-- Miguel de Cervantes "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
-- Isaac Asimov "Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door."
-- Sebastian Roch Nicholas "Christmas is a sentient wallet-smashing entity."
-- Brad Johnson "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-- Martin Luther King Jr. "For every action there is an equal and opposite government program."
-- Bob Wells "Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow."
-- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
-- Martin Luther King Jr., "I Have a Dream" "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
-- Isaac Asimov "The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas."
-- Whitney Griswold "Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
-- Isaac Asimov "I am the Black Mage! I am the one who makes the peoples fall down!"
-- Black Mage, 8-Bit Theater "What kind of spiritual philosophy is process-of-elimination? Are you kidding me? What do you look like telling someone that 'You have nothing to lose!' You know? It's like, '6 months no payments! No risk! No obligation! Buy Jesus now!' That, to me, is pathetic, and I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry. I can't apologize for calling out something that poor."
-- Karim Temple "One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
-- Elbert Hubbard "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
-- Batty, Blade Runner "A rocket will never be able to leave the earth's atmosphere."
-- The New York Times (1936) "Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race."
-- Albert Einstein "Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."
-- James M. Barrie, rectorial address, St. Andrew’s University, Scotland (3 May 1922) "I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education."
-- Wilson Mizner (1876 - 1933) "Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence."
-- Henrik Tikkanen "Experience is not what happens to a man. It's what a man does with what happens to him."
-- Aldous Huxley "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
-- John Lennon (1941 - 1980), Beautiful Boy "I personally don't bother with them, because it's like a science teacher arguing with a creationist. You may be smarter, and much better-educated, and more knowledgeable, and more reasonable, but they stand smug against you with arms folded because they substitute sheer arrogance for all of those things and think that it will suffice. And in their own eyes, it does. If you got a reasonably impartial third-party to watch, he would agree with you, but arguing with the child in his own house is a complete waste of time."
-- Michael Wong "Never be normal!"
-- Ron, Kim Possible "To learn and not think over what you have learned is perfectly useless. To think without having learned is dangerous."
-- Gore Vidal "Be careful, Preston. You're treading on my dreams."
-- DuPont, Equilibrium "To feel. 'Cause you've never done it, you can never know it. But it's as vital as breath. And without it, without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock... ticking."
-- Mary, Equilibrium "I expect to pass through the world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness I can show to any creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer it, for I shall not pass this way again."
-- Stephen Grellet "Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct."
-- Thomas Carlyle "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
-- Aesop, "The Lion and the Mouse" "You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Compassion is like a springwater coming up from the ground, and it can be used to sustain everyone."
-- Dainin Katagiri "The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history."
-- Carl Rowan "Let them hate so long as they fear."
-- Lucius Accius "Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody."
-- Franklin P. Adams, "Nods and Becks" (1944), p. 206 "All experience is an arch to build upon."
-- Henry Brooks Adams, "The Education of Henry Adams" (1907), ch. 6 "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."
-- Muhammad Ali "He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god"
-- Aristotle, Politics "The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
-- Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later "Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
-- Winston Churchill "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
-- Mark Twain, attributed, Everyone's Mark Twain, p. 553, ed. Caroline Thomas Harnsberger "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
-- Plato "Windows 98 should have been released for free on Jan. 1, 1996 and titled Windows 95.1. If this were Hollywood, then Windows 98 would be the equivalent of 'Heaven's Gate', 'Waterworld' and 'Godzilla' rolled into one. A huge, overhyped, bloated, embarrassment."
-- Jesse Berst, ZDNet "It's more than a game. It's an institution."
-- Thomas Hughes "Chastity -- the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions."
-- Aldous Huxley "Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men."
-- T.H. Huxley "Oh, I'm a child am I, Lois? Well if I'm a child, do you know what that makes you? A pedophile. And I'll be damned if I'm gonna stand here and be lectured by a pervert."
-- Peter Griffin, Family Guy "We think in generalities, but we live in detail."
-- Alfred North Whitehead "It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties."
-- Alfred North Whitehead "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four "And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself."
-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four "There is no escape -- we pay for the violence of our ancestors."
-- "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future."
-- "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual."
-- "Muad'Dib: The Ninety-Nine Wonders of the Universe" by Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him."
-- "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual."
-- "Words of Muad'dib" by Princes Irulan, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "As with all priests, you learned early to call the truth heresy."
-- Death Cell Interview with Bronso of IX, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
-- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, in Dune by Frank Herbert "If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves..."
-- Thomas Edison "I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing..."
-- Thomas Edison "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
-- Thomas Edison "The only time I really become discouraged is when I think of all the things I would like to do and the little time I have in which to do them."
-- Thomas Edison "What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes!"
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) "Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins... and you will have sins in abundance."
-- Thomas Paine "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned."
-- Buddha "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte "Anger is a tool, like a razor edged sword. Its not to be wielded bluntly like a mace."
-- Daeraug Van`Perce "When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"
-- Sydney Harris "A true writer writes, not because he wants to, but because he can’t help it."
-- R.A. Salvatore "This is the greatest tragedy; the illiterate, uneduacted masses are so sure and certain of themselves and the educated, literate ones are so full of doubt"
-- Bertrand Russell "The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth."
-- Bertrand Russell, "A Debate on the Existence of God" (1948) in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 136. "The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."
-- Arthur C. Clarke "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
-- Francis Bellamy (1885-1931). Mr. Bellamy was a socialist, Baptist minister, and he created this original pledge before it was altered several times. "I've got black magic, a hair trigger, and a short fuse. Bring it!"
-- Black Mage, Episode 036: "Survivor 8-bit Style", 8-Bit Theater "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-- Proverb (Italian) "She touched the bricks of Widener Library, the glass cases in the Peabody Museum, as if they were the grail. She had never been particularly sensitive to myth or drama; the anguish of Juliet seemed to her artificial, that of Willy Loman merely wasteful. Only King Arthur, struggling to create a better social order, had interested her. But now, walking under the huge autumn trees, she suddenly caught a glimpse of a force that could span generations, fortunes left to endow learning and achievement the benefactors would never see, individual effort spanning and shaping centuries to come. She stopped, and looked at the sky through the leaves, at the buildings solid with purpose."
-- Nancy Kress, Beggars in Spain "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
-- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine (9 November 1930); also used in the obituary in New York Times (19 April 1955) "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
-- Abraham Lincoln "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."
-- Abraham Lincoln "I just love the smell of C4 in the morning."
-- Ling Ling, 3x3 eyes "It's disgusting how Microsoft portrays itself as the supreme innovator when just about all the technology that it has was copied off of others' previous work."
-- Timothy W Macinta "During Microsoft's 1999 anti-trust trial there were reports of Microsoft encouraging its employees to post messages in public forums stating that 'Microsoft is responsible for all good things in computerdom' and that 'The government has no right to prevent MS from doing anything. Period.' It's pretty sad when the only people you can get to support you are those that depend upon you for their daily sustenance."
-- Timothy W Macinta "Did you realize that a 486 is still a very useable computer if you put an operating system besides Windows on it?"
-- Timothy W Macinta "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (Part 1) "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires."
-- Susan B. Anthony, in a speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1896) "Someday I will be queen, but I will always be myself."
-- Garnet Til Alexandros 17th, Final Fantasy IX "On slang: The Internet is supposed to be about the transfer of ideas and information. Let’s try and make sure our ideas are legible."
-- Brad Johnson "If you're not mature enough to walk into a pharamacy and buy condoms, or deal with the shitstorm that will occur if your parents find out, you shouldn't be having sex."
-- Brad Johnson "Our All is at Stake, & the little Conveniencys & Comforts of Life, when set in Competition with our Liberty, ought to be rejected not with Reluctance but with Pleasure."
-- George Mason, letter to George Washington about Virginia's nonimportation associations, April 5, 1769. Robert A.Rutland, The Papers of George Mason (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), 1:99. "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."
-- epitaph of Leonard P. Matlovich (1988) "You could move."
-- Abigail Van Buren, "Dear Abby," in response to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-- Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (1973) "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 "I've begun worshipping the Sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the Sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate."
-- George Carlin, You Are All Diseased "I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.
-- George Carlin "Straight Americans need... an education of the heart and soul. They must understand -- to begin with -- how it can feel to spend years denying your own deepest truths, to sit silently through classes, meals, and church services while people you love toss off remarks that brutalize your soul."
-- Bruce Bawer "About a year ago I was a guest on a network news show in New York. They were showing film clips from a gay pride parade down Fifth Avenue, but they only decided to show the part with men in dresses and heels. I had seen the parade, and there were men in business suits as well. After showing the film, the newsperson made some comments, and I found the comments extremely offensive. 'This is what's wrong with the media,' I said. 'You show a fringe position. You show one point of view. You're closing the minds of the people by not showing them what the reality is.' I got up and walked out, and I've never been asked back again."
-- Kathleen Nolan "Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
-- Harvey Fierstein "What luck for the rulers that men do not think."
-- Adolph Hitler "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority."
-- Ralph W. Sockman "One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings."
-- Franklin Thomas, as quoted in Gloria Steinem's Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, 1983 "I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."
-- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) "Racism is man's gravest threat to man -- the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason."
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel "The Dalai Lama visited the White House and told the President that he could teach him to find a higher state of consciousness. Then after talking to Bush for a few minutes, he said, 'You know what? Let's just grab lunch.'"
-- Bill Maher "For the whole Earth is the Sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on Stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives."
-- Pericles, as quoted in A Brief and True report concerning Williamsburg in Virginia by Rutherford Goodwin (1941), p. 125 "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
-- Mark Twain "All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire."
-- Aristotle "Beware of one who has nothing to lose."
-- Proverb (Italian) "Instead of seeing the rug being pulled from under us, we can learn to dance on a shifting carpet."
-- Thomas Crum "As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it."
-- Dick Cavett "Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, till we can clear these ambiguities."
-- William Shakespeare "Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps."
-- Emo Phillips "I pretty much try to stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face."
-- Johnny Depp "I fondly hope I'm beginning to misconstrue you."
-- Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning "Liberty means responsibility. That's why most men dread it."
-- George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists: Liberty and Equality", Man and Superman "A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety."
-- Aesop "I discovered I scream the same way whether I'm about to be devoured by a Great White or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot."
-- Kevin James "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time; / And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle, / Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing."
-- William Shakespeare, Macbeth "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
-- M. Kathleen Casey "Like a parasite that fails to realize its welfare would be enhanced by cooperating with rather than killing its host, humanity is overwhelming earth's life support systems."
-- Carl May "He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."
-- Saki (1870 - 1916) (H. H. Munro) "Wise men don't need advice. Fools don't take it."
-- Benjamin Franklin "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
-- Voltaire, letter to Frederick the Great, April 6, 1767; from George Seldes' The Great Quotations, 1983, p. 713 "Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work."
-- Gallagher "After the smoke clears and the bullshit settles, all of the whining about Christmas boils down to one thing: people who are trying to change the way other people celebrate Christmas. That's why some people get pissed off at Hallmark cards that say 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas'. No one's stopping them from calling it 'Christmas', but it actually offends them that some people choose to call it something else. And look at the way they get upset when they can't put Nativity scenes on government property, so they run screaming to the media every fucking year. Hey listen, if you're a Christian and you like nativity scenes, good for you. Put one in your living room. Put one in your church. Hell, put one on your front lawn for all I care. But noooooo, that's not enough, is it? Oh no, you're being 'oppressed' if you can't put it on somebody else's property too! Well, cry me a fucking river. I guess 'religious freedom' means 'I get to run around putting my religious stuff on other peoples' property' now, eh?"
-- Michael Wong, "Christmas Whiners" "When is someone going to institute the death penalty for telemarketing? Call your local government representative, and ask them to get on it."
-- Michael Wong "Where the preamble [of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom] declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting the words 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, 'A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;' the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363 "The only way anyone could 'prove' a quote is inaccurate is by having a complete, verified transcript of everything a person ever said or wrote -- a practical impossibility. But that doesn't mean we should accept every quote anyone attributes to someone famous. As rationalists, our only reasonable course when provided with a quote (no matter whose side it supports) is to ask critical questions. Is it consistent with other things we know the person wrote or said? Is there any specific written evidence from a primary source for the quote? If so, is the context in which it is found consistent with the apparent meaning of the quote?"
-- Ed Buckner "For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us."
-- Donald Williams "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof."
-- Ashley Montague "Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
-- Oscar Wilde "...the nature of debate is: 'I disagree with your position; this is why', not 'I refuse to even say whether I disagree with your position, but I see an opportunity to attack your personal conduct'."
-- Michael Wong "The best argument against democracy is a 5-minute conversation with the average voter."
-- Winston Churchill "My soul has insufficiet Awesomeness Recognition RAM to fully comprehend that image."
-- Brad Johnson "Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?"
-- Spike Milligan, The Goon Show "The key that is used does not rust."
-- Proverb (Albanian) "I think God is probably the most boring topic... ever. I get dizzy from all the circles."
-- Karim Temple, re: "Existence of God/Supreme Being" "Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."
-- Unknown "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."
-- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, Act III "And why should we, of all people, expect the proud new developing nations to see the world precisely as we see it? Was any new nation ever more outspoken, independent and unaligned than the young America of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln?"
-- Chester Bowles, The Conscience of a Liberal (page 256) "To some extent we are all the prisoneers of stereotypes; we see each other in terms of distorted and oversimplified images. Better communication in the realm of ideas, of the arts, and of science can help refashion these false images. And by seeing more clearly we may act more wisely."
-- Chester Bowles, The Conscience of a Liberal (page 255) "We all declare for liberty; but in using the word we do not all mean the same thing."
-- Abraham Lincoln "[My] deep religiosity... found an abrupt ending at the age of twelve, through the reading of popular scientific books."
-- Albert Einstein, Einstein, History, and Other Passions (page 172) "In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."
-- Mark Twain "Teaching and imparting of knowledge make sense in an unchanging environment... But if there is one truth about modern man it is that he lives in an environment that is continually changing. The only man who is educated is the man who has learned how to learn ... how to adapt and change ... who has learned that no knowledge is secure, that only the process of seeking knowledge gives a basis for security."
-- Carl Rogers "The great end in religious instruction, is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs; not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision; not to burden memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought"
-- William Channing, A Chosen Faith (page 30) "The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'"
-- Robert G. Ingersoll "The biblical concepts of sin and salvation are an integral part of Christian doctrine. Christianity first creates a problem (sin) and then offers a 'solution' (salvation). This is not unlike the protection racket; you either buy 'protection' -- or else!"
-- Rev. Donald Morgan Speedy: "May the best man win!"
Robin: "I intend to."
-- Teen Titans "No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals."
-- from The Tleilaxu Godbuk, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "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 "In creating moral retards, religion is steeped in pathology, coping with a populace of ethical degenerates: its victims. The 'faithful,' or the 'flock,' are what religion is designed to create and to cope with, i.e., with an immoral mass that acknowledges the religion's superiority and power; that is inherently wayward, but continuously deferential."
-- Richard G. Rieben, Ethics for Earthlings (page 26) [the Teen Titans arrive back at the Tower. Starfire bursts through the door, gleeful]
"Come, Friends. I shall thank you all by reciting the Poem of Gratitude. All six thousand verses."
[the Titans look shocked]
-- Starfire, Teen Titans "Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds."
-- John Perry Barlow "Such a rich store of myths enfolds Paul Muad'dib, the Mentat Emperor, and his sister, Alia, it is difficult to see the real persons behind these veils. But there were, after all, a man born Paul Atreides and a woman born Alia. Their flesh was subject to space and time. And even though their oracular powers placed them beyond the usual limits of time and space, they came from human stock. They experienced real events which left real traces upon a real universe. To understand them, it must be seen that their catastrophe was the catastrophe of all mankind. This work is dedicated, then, not to Muad'dib or his sister, but to their heirs -- to all of us."
-- Dedication in the Muad'dib Concordance as copied from The Tabla Memorium of the Mahdi Spirit Cult, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology."
-- Carl Sagan "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
-- Alfred North Whitehead "The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force."
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau "In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion."
-- Carl Sagan Interviewer: "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?"
Druyan: "He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know."
-- Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's wife) "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-- George Santayana "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
-- George Santayana "The United States furnishes the first example in history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control of religion."
-- Philip Schaff, Church and State in the United States "To free a man from error is to give, not take away."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer "Empirical thinking leads to a basically objective view of the world, belief leads to a view of the world in which the distinction between objective and subjective is blurred.... Thus, cause is apt to be mistaken for effect, the wish confused with its fulfillment, the symbol with the thing."
-- George Serban, M.D., The Tyranny Of Magical Thinking "Many of your Earth ways are still strange to me, but that was... just plain freaky, correct?"
-- Starfire, Teen Titans "So, of course, Gish's presentation was well received, which it would have been the case had he only gotten up and said 'praise the Lord' and sat back down."
-- Michael Shermer, describing "Young-Earth" Creationist Duane T. Gish's last debate of his career (which was against Shermer), in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 3, 2001, quoted from E-Skeptic for June 3, 2001 "The evening was very professionally organized, and most of the people were exceptionally polite (and in an odd way too polite, as if they don't trust themselves), although it did make me a little nervous when one church official told me after the debate when a big crowd of people surrounded me that he had assigned me a body guard (some big guy was standing there next to me) 'just in case.' Just in case what? I thought Christians were suppose to be exceptionally tolerant. Well, in any case, I guess I was grateful for the gesture, 'just in case.'"
-- Michael Shermer, describing "Young-Earth" Creationist Duane T. Gish's last debate of his career (which was against Shermer), in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 3, 2001, quoted from E-Skeptic for June 3, 2001 "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
-- Herbert Spencer, Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (vol. 3, ch. 9) "Many people use the term 'theory' as a synonym for 'opinion.' However, in a science classroom, 'theory' means something very specific. A scientist formulates a hypothesis which may explain a phenomenon. He or she then tests the hypothesis through some means of experimentation or seeking supporting evidence. If the hypothesis passes the test, then it is tested again and again by other scientists to see if it passes it consistently. If the testing supports the hypothesis over and over, it becomes a theory. If it doesn't pass consistently, another hypothesis is sought. Sometimes, a better hypothesis comes along that explains more or better. In that case, the old theory is discarded and the new adopted.
"A theory should not only explain what has happened, but predict what will happen. Theories about the Earth's movement in the heavens, for example, accurately predict when the sun will rise. In science, a theory must be tested using empirical means. In other words, at some point, the scientist must be able to perceive evidence for the theory with normal human senses. Even then, the theory is not considered 'fact' unless it becomes somehow empirically observed. For instance, the theory that the earth is round can be 'proved' either by travelling all the way around it or by flying into space to look. Only then does it become fact.
In science, there are relatively few 'facts.'"
-- Morris Sullivan "I'm sorry I bit you...and pulled your hair...and punched you in the face..."
-- Lilo, Lilo & Stitch (2002) "I did not know that we had ever quarreled."
-- Henry David Thoreau, having been urged to make his peace with God "The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it."
-- Mark Twain, Notebook "And she disciplines me! She disciplines me real good... five times a day! With bricks! And a pillowcase..."
-- Lilo, Lilo & Stitch (2002) "A cult is a religion with no political power."
-- Tom Wolfe, In Our Time [Starfire, Cyborg and Robin are sitting at a picnic table]
Starfire: "This tangy yellow beverage is truly delightful."
Cyborg: "Uh, Starfire?"
Robin: "That's mustard."
Starfire: "Is there more?"
[Robin and Cyborg stare at her weirdly]
-- Teen Titans "You have a great name. He must kill your name before he kills you."
-- Juba, Gladiator (2000) "But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it."
-- Pericles' Funeral Oration, from Thudcydides' History of the Peloponnesian War "All humans share an entire realm of information, a whole dimension of existence that we create, and though it has no effect whatsoever on anything in the universe but us it still matters."
-- Karim Temple "If by 'wrong' you actually mean 'right perpetually on all matters in the universe,' then you are correct. Otherwise, I mourn for you and your wrongness."
-- Brad Johnson "There are two things you don't want to see being made -- sausage and legislation."
-- Otto von Bismarck "Advance in science comes by laying brick upon brick, not by sudden erection of fairy palaces."
-- J. S. Huxley "In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government."
-- David Hume, Essay 9: "Of The Parties of Great Britain", Essays Moral, Political, Literary "So I said to the officer, 'Officer, I thought she was 18.'
And he said, 'I don't care how old you thought she was, you're not supposed to stab people in the face.'"
-- Unknown "Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250"
-- Harper's Index (Oct. 1989) "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
-- Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy "A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
-- Albert Einstein "Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up."
-- Robert Frost "Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died."
-- Erma Bombeck "Never judge a book by its movie."
-- J. W. Eagan "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
-- Pericles "Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below."
-- John Dryden "Ill habits gather unseen degrees -- as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas."
-- John Dryden "Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for."
-- Socrates "I will be as harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice... I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard."
-- William Lloyd Garrison "Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests."
-- Isaac Asimov "It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain."
-- Mark Twain "...shake off all the fears and servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787 "Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge."
-- Robert Ingersoll, "The Gods" (1872) "You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was."
-- Proverb (Irish) "An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep from falling off the earth."
-- Saying (Irish) "Wishes won't wash dishes."
-- Proverb (American) "...statues are so last millenium. I think a giant sketch of me scorched into the Earth's crust from a giant orbital laser cannon would be much more gratifying."
-- Alasdair Scott Pleakley: "I knew I forgot to add theft, endangerment to self, and insanity to my list of things to do today."
Dr. Jumba Jookiba: "You too?"
-- Lilo & Stitch "Force without wisdom falls of its own weight."
-- Horace "Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even."
-- Horace "One good turn desires another."
-- John Heywood (1497-1580) "Haste makes waste."
-- John Heywood (1497-1580) "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
-- John Heywood (1497-1580) "A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
-- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant Of Venice "How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!"
-- William Shakespeare, As You Like It "He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave."
-- William Drummond (1585-1649) "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
-- Richard Steele (1672-1729) "I hope this wound manifests physically, becomes infected, and condemns you to a hospital bed."
-- Brad Johnson "As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) "Nurture your mind with great thoughts."
-- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) "Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory."
-- G. Behn "When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters -- one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity"
-- Saul David Alinsky "Beware the Fury of a Patient Man."
-- John Dryden, "Absalom and Achitophel" (1681) "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid"
-- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855) "I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
-- Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Sherlock Holmes "A great many people think they are thinking when they are actually rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James (1842-1910) "Ideas are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny."
-- Carl Schurz (1829-1906), address at Faneuil Hall, Boston (18 April 1859) "His ignorance is encyclopedic"
-- Abba Eban (1915 - 2002) "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world"
-- Unknown "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being"
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Sometimes the perfect person for you is the one you least expect"
-- Unknown "Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'"
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner."
-- Unknown "[T]he concept of possibility is not very helpful in historical matters. Endless historical scenarios can be concocted, and virtually all of them are possible, even the weirdest and most fantastic. That's why to say that a certain scenario is possible almost always is to say nothing about it at all.

...But it's crucial to make the distinction between possibility and probability because very different criteria apply in each case. To be historically possible, something only needs to be imaginable. However, for something to be historically probable means that there is some evidence for it. Not everyone in the historical Jesus discussion seems aware of this distinction, for we often read statements like 'Isn't it possible that Jesus...?' Fill in the blank with any scenario you like, no matter how you like: the answer will always be yes."
-- Robert Miller "...the greatest advances in civil rights and civic moral consciousness in human history occurred precisely as the result not of obeying, but of disobeying this very commandment [to honor our parents]: the social revolutions of the sixties, naturally abhorred by conservatives and yet spearheaded by rebellious teenagers and young adults, nevertheless secured the moral rights of women and minorities--something unprecedented in human history--and by opposing the Vietnam war, our children displayed for the first time a massive popular movement in defense of the very pacifism which Christians boast of having introduced into the world, yet are usually the last to actually stand up for. It can even be said that our entire moral ethos is one of thinking for ourselves, of rebellion and moral autonomy, of daring to stand up against even our elders when our conscience compels it."
-- Richard Carrier, "The Real Ten Commandments" "It is clear then, that if anyone's commandments ought to be posted on school and courthouse walls, it should be Solon's. He has more right as the founder of our civic ideals, and as a more profound and almost modern moral thinker. His commandments are more befitting our civil society, more representative of what we really believe and what we cherish in our laws and economy. And indeed, in the end, they are essentially secular. Is it an accident that when Solon's ideals reigned, there grew democracies and civil rights, and ideals we now consider fundamental to modern Western society, yet when the ideals of Moses replaced them, we had a thousand years of oppression, darkness, and tyranny? Is it coincidence that when the ideals of Moses were replaced with those of Solon, when men decided to fight and die not for the Ten Commandments but for the resurrection of Athenian civil society, we ended up with the great Democratic Revolutions and the social and legal structures that we now take for granted as the height and glory of human achievement and moral goodness? I think we owe our thanks to Solon. Moses did nothing for us--his laws were neither original nor significant in comparison. When people cry for the hanging of the Ten Commandments of Moses on school and court walls, I am astonished. Solon's Ten Commandments have far more right to hang in those places than those of Moses. The Athenian's Commandments are far more noble and profound, and far more appropriate to a free society. Who would have guessed this of a pagan? Maybe everyone of sense."
-- Richard Carrier, "The Real Ten Commandments" "The good judge others by their character, not their beliefs, and punish deeds, not thoughts, and punish only to teach, not to torture."
-- Richard Carrier, "From Taoist to Infidel" (2001) "The mere fact that consciousness exists, that some person exists who can see and know and create and manifest everything good for others and find happiness in living, is the most astounding thing of all. It does not matter if it is brief, for merely the opportunity itself is priceless and our being here, to acknowledge it, to study it, to know it, and to love it, gives the universe meaning."
-- Richard Carrier, "Our Meaning in Life" "A healthy mind in a healthy body, pursuing and manifesting what it loves, is the meaning of life."
-- Richard Carrier, "Our Meaning in Life" "Death is not an event in life... our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein "To live eternally is never for one moment to stop living an examined life."
-- James Still, "Death Is Not an Event in Life" "Happy the man, and happy he alone, / He who can call today his own; / He who, secure within, can say, / Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today."
-- John Dryden, Imitation of Horace, Book 3, Ode 29 (1685) "Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all."
-- Alexander The Great "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."
-- George Bernard Shaw "The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations."
-- George Santayana (1863-1952) "A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, 'Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?' holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. 'Yet,' added he, 'none of you can tell where it pinches me.'"
-- Plutarch, Parallel Lives "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-- Aristotle "I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."
-- Pastor Tony Campolo "The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war."
-- Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit "I’m totally feminine and girly, but in a dark, black lace kind of way."
-- Juliya Chernetsky (hostess of 'IMX' and 'Uranium' on Fuse) "I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues"
-- Duke Ellington "...we face a great moral challenge to make sure opportunity is an open door through which every citizen can pass not a revolving door which turns for some and doesn't budge for others."
-- Ted Kulongoski "Although no amount of contrition by politicians will ever sufficiently atone for the sins of their predecessors, blatant refusal to even acknowledge the magnitude of such crimes chillingly raises the possibility of the capacity to repeat them."
-- Michael Miyamoto, "Japan Should Teach Horrors of WWII", San Bernardino County Sun, Wednesday, April, 13, 2005 edition "Solace thy thirst in wisdom. / Succor thy mind in learning, / For riches of knowledge yearning. / Let truth be thy only kingdom."
-- Daniel F Mitchell "Wisdom is knowing that you don't know."
-- Socrates "Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond."
-- Jeffery Borenstein "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it."
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. David Spitz, chapter 1, p. 14 (1975).
Originally published in 1859. "The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds."
-- Will Durant "I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous -- if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men."
-- Robert Ingersoll "Careful and correct use of language is a powerful aid to straight thinking, for putting into words precisely what we mean necessitates getting our own minds quite clear on what we mean."
-- William Ian Beardmore Beveridge "Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived."
-- Oscar Wilde "People aren't interested in facts. They want to see their side's spin on the facts rather than the facts themselves."
-- Michael Wong "The most valuable thing anyone can do when faced with someone who's being indoctrinated in any given viewpoint is to expose him to the other viewpoint. If the supporters of the first viewpoint think the only way to sell it is to keep him insulated from opposing viewpoints rather than being able to make a solid argument for it, then that says all you need to know about its fundamental weakness."
-- Michael Wong "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine."
-- J. B. S. Haldane "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? Whence then is evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
-- Epicurus "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1981) edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press "I choose to be a free man, with a free mind. You, on the other hand, throw away the greatest evolutionary gift of humanity, which is its capacity for free thought."
-- Michael Wong "You have allowed your critical thinking skills to wither on the vine. You accept your articles of religious faith blindly, without questioning and without thinking. That is what separates a mindless fundamentalist from an intelligent religious thinker. Your mind is slowly rotting away, and you don't even know it."
-- Michael Wong "None of what you have said so far is a debate. You ignore everything I say, you refuse to address my points individually, and you continually restate your proselytizing blurbs. I feel like I'm arguing with a sales brochure."
-- Michael Wong "What kind of unabashedly immoral, militaristic society does one live in, when any conceivable atrocity is deemed morally acceptable if it occurs in wartime or is sanctioned by a sufficiently powerful being?"
-- Michael Wong "Frankly, I think it's an act of shameful ingratitude for you to thank God for your survival, rather than the scientists and doctors who created the techniques and technologies that kept you alive."
-- Michael Wong "I got to write these jokes. So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that's funny. Or, If the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn't funny."
-- Mitch Hedberg, Mitch All Together "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful"
-- Anton LaVey "True friends stab you in the front."
-- Oscar Wilde "Twenty-five hundred years ago it took an exceptional man like Diogenes to exclaim, 'I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world.' Today we must all be struggling to make these words our own. We have come to the point in history when anyone who is only Japanese or American, only Oriental or Occidental, is only half- human. The other half that beats with the pulse of all humanity has yet to be born."
-- Houston Smith "Literature is news that stays news."
-- Ezra Pound "In heaven all the interesting people are missing."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "Facts are stubborn things"
-- John Adams "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."
-- Anatole France "For separate, perfect, and immovable
Images can break the solitude
Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes."
-- W.B. Yeats, "The Phases of the Moon" "Some people never admit they're wrong and continue to find new, and often mutually inconsistent, arguments to support their case ... others claim to have never supported the incorrect view in the first place or, if they did, it was only to show that it was inconsistent."
-- Stephen Hawking "Tell me something about this 'Salvation' of yours. Salvation implies a threat, correct? You must be saved from something. So who or what are we supposedly being saved from? God himself. What's the danger from which we need salvation? An eternity of agonizing torture, courtesy of a 'loving' God. Call it God, call it Jesus, call it the Holy Trinity or the Heavenly Host, but whatever the name, the result is the same: he's supposedly 'saving' us from himself.

"Quite frankly, salvation doesn't mean a whole lot when the person 'saving' you is the same person who's threatening you! The notion of Christian salvation is quite frankly the most incredibly audacious example of spin-doctoring in human history. If a mugger holds a gun to your head and says that out of his love for you, he will 'save' you from his own violence as long as you give him your money, would you think him wondrously merciful? Would you be glad you ran into him? Or would you think that he's a deranged, violent sociopath?"
-- Michael Wong "'Family' has always been the religious right's code-word for 'Christian Beliefs.' I'm now just as sick of that word as I am of 'freedom.'"
-- Damien Sorresso "[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
-- Charles Darwin, Introduction: The Descent of Man "Books, purchasable at a low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate -- with the best teachers -- the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses. Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society."
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark "This is the worst kind of discrimination. The kind against me!"
-- Bender, Futurama "Where there is doubt, there is freedom."
-- Proverb (Latin) "In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved..."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia "If society lets any considerable number of its members grow up as mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame."
-- John Stuart Mill "If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
-- Thomas Jefferson "There is a reason that churches want your children, and it's not because they've already fully developed their reasoning skills."
-- Michael Wong "Does the warmaster truly wish a disquisition upon the New Republic’s perverse system of government? It has to do with a bizarre concept called democracy, in which ruling power is given to whomever is most skillful at directing the herd instincts of the largest masses of their most ignorant citizens."
-- Nom Anor, Traitor "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations."
-- John von Neumann "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
-- Anais Nin "Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say that it's 'just' a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is 'just' a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally -- taking it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along."
-- David Quammen, "Was Darwin Wrong?", National Geographic "... Congress, in voting a plan for the government of the Western territories, retained a clause setting aside one section in each township for the support of public schools, while striking out the provision reserving a section for the support of religion. Commented Madison: 'How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment.'"
-- Richard B. Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, Harper & Row, 1973, p. 206. The Congress here referred to was the Continental Congress; the Madison quote is from his letter to James Monroe, May 29, 1785, according to Morris. The Madison being referred to is, of course, James Madison (1751-1836): Founding Father and 4th U.S. President "Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and the wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers."
-- Charles W. Eliot "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
-- George Bernard Shaw "Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have."
-- Louis E. Boone "Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them"
-- Washington Irving "Your biggest asset is rampant ignorance. You would never start a project if you knew how much it would really cost. Employees stay here because they don't know there are better jobs across the street. Customers buy your products because they don't know about all the bugs. I recommend wearing trash cans on your heads to avoid accidental exposure to knowledge."
-- Dogbert, Dilbert "Most important, nature is not constrained by any person's lack of imagination."
-- Mark Isaak, "Bombardier Beetles and the Argument of Design" "Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings."
-- H.L. Mencken "When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
-- John Muir "When it comes to religion, your opponent in a debate is often like a punching bag with a happy-face painted on it. No matter how many times you bash the fuck out of it, it will just come right back at you with that idiotic happy-face until you get tired and stop."
-- Michael Wong "You cannot convince the bigot. He is beyond convincing, he is immune to arguments. The idea of the argument is not to convince him, but to convince the fence-sitters who are watching from the sidelines."
-- Michael Wong "People arguing against Jefferson's wall of separation comment ignore the fact that it is a perfectly valid indicator of the intent behind the First Amendment. It may not be law itself, but it indicates the intent behind the law, and the intent behind the law is crucial when deciding how to interpret the wording of the law.

Moreover, they are fond of using Jefferson quotes in which he says good things about God. But there are many varieties of God, and deism was popular at the time in certain intellectual circles. At no point does Jefferson ever say that the Bible has a place in government. They are trying to act as though anything positive said about God must mean that the Bible has a place in government, when nothing could possibly be further from the truth of their intent. Their intent was clear: individuals may be answerable to God (not necessarily the Christian God, but 'Nature's God'), but the government must not be influenced by the clergy."
-- Michael Wong "Could you possibly use the grey matter your ancestors went to all that trouble to evolve for you?"
-- Martin Kemmish "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
-- Wilhelm Stekel "The gods favor the strong."
-- Tacitus "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
-- Herbert Spencer "Give someone a fish, you feed him for one day. Teach him how to fish, and you lose a steady customer."
-- The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition #207 "Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can't remember what they are."
-- Steven Wright "All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific."
-- Steven Wright "Excuse my proverbial French, but if I didn't ask you to create me, what the fuck do I have to thank you for?"
-- Karim Temple "One thing I find quite often is an uncommonly recognized common fault -- people always fail to ask the right questions. They ask the wrong questions, and then believe so fervently in their irrelevant answers."
-- Karim Temple "The truth of the abiotic genesis of life is strewn out before us by our heavenly mothers and fathers: the stars. Did you know that stars generate all of the basic elements we as organisms thrive on? Hydrogen abound, aged stars generate the oxygen that combines with it to create our precious water -- the blood, the soul, the amnion of all that is known to live. And carbon, the skeletal substance of the living world, comes from these big bright wonders which, interestingly enough, entirely fit the conventional definition of what it means for an entity to be alive. These unimaginably enormous things, these stars, many times explode when they die, firing these and many other building blocks of life across space. It's almost as if they're sacrificing their brilliance just for the chance for us to live. It's quite beautiful, actually."
-- Karim Temple "Sex is referred to as 'consummation' for a reason. In Biblical times, the act of sex was marriage itself; it really had nothing to do with any ceremonies and rings or contracts and pieces of paper. Real marriage is a committed relationship, not a traditional ceremony that you wait years to have. Having sex just because it feels good only serves to satiate a primordial desire in a person and accomplishes nothing. I don't judge people; I don't care for the weight of the gavel. But people care too much about what feels good as opposed to what is good. It's a tremendous immaturity that is fed and fueled by today's society. We're turning into nations of self-serving cavemen that can't even imagine a world bigger than they are, let alone being a part of it or being responsible for the fact that their actions have consequent repercussions in it. 'I want to have as much fun as I can have in life.' What children adults have become. It never occurs to people that maybe their own compulsions and pleasures are not the only thing there is to life."
-- Karim Temple "If a sign is useless, it is meaningless. That is the point of Occam's maxim."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein "The whole point of being an author and supposedly an expert on a field is to present the wheat from the chaff. If you're just lumping sources together without discrimination, then you're back to the problem that Richard Carrier talked about, the work becomes useless as a reference, since you have to repeat all the research of the person's book in order to find out what is right and what is wrong."
-- Mike Soileau "For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
-- Plato "There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions."
-- Douglas Adams, from an impromptu speech he gave at a Cambridge conference in 1998 "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
-- Benjamin Franklin "Authority is never without hate."
-- Euripides, Ion "I can't help but think that someday, some alien researcher is going to be picking over the bones of our civilization and saying to himself: 'stupid fuckers.'"
-- Michael Wong "Today we are being drowned in a rising tide of bullshit, where every promoter of a religious agenda insists he's actually working from non-religious motives. It could be creationism, anti-abortionism, anti-cloning, or any other religious issue of the week; no matter what it is, they always invent some thinly veiled pseudo-secular fake reason for their position."
-- Michael Wong "More of a Bible-thumper than George W. Bush himself? Were you figuring that he puts on Crusader armour and smites infidels on weekends?"
-- Michael Wong "The idea that scientists should base their conclusions upon popularity rather than scientific methods is so profoundly stupid that anyone seriously proposing it should be neutered to protect the gene pool."
-- Michael Wong "Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson."
-- from "The Humanity of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "Here lies a toppled god-- / His fall was not a small one. / We did but build his pedestal, / A narrow and tall one."
-- Tleilaxu epigram, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "I give you the desert chameleon, whose ability to blend itself into the background tells you all you need to know about the roots of ecology and the foundations of a personal identity."
-- Book of Diatribes from the Hayt Chronicles, in Children of Dune by Frank Herbert "Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name? Whence comes your downward degeneration from the original revelation?"
-- Paul Atreides, in Children of Dune by Frank Herbert "All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
-- Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto), in Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert "When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious. Allow for surprises. When we create, there are always other forces at work."
-- Darwi Odrade, in Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert "Discovery is dangerous... but so is life. A man unwilling to take risk is doomed never to learn, never to grow, never to live."
-- Pardot Kynes (Planetologist), in Dune: House Harkonnen by Brian Herbert "Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife -- chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'"
-- "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp with too much force is to be taken over by power, thus becoming its victim."
-- Bene Gesserit Axiom, in Children of Dune by Frank Herbert "Each human being is a time machine."
-- Zensunni Fire Poetry, in Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert "Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short."
-- Mentat Handbook, in Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert "Simplicity is the most difficult of all concepts."
-- Mentat Conundrum, in Dune: House Corrino by Brian Herbert "The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences."
-- Pardot Kynes, ecology of Bela Tegeuse, initial report to the imperium, in Dune: House Atreides by Brian Herbert "The space, the bench, and the lighting in this room are at least as pretty as anything on the walls."
-- Melissa Janssens "A man cannot drink from a mirage, but he can drown in it."
-- Fremen Wisdom, in Dune: House Corrino by Brian Herbert "The principal cause of belief in psychic phenomena is the inability of the average man to observe accurately and estimate the value of evidence, plus a bias in favor of the phenomena being real."
-- Douglas Blackburn, psychic hoaxer. "The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
"But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task ..."
-- Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium "Abraham Lincoln once said, 'The philosophy of the classroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next' (Martin, With God on Our Side, p. 92). The Religious Right has taken this to heart, and this is why they have led a massive assault on the public school system, trying to make the classroom their podium, from which they can indoctrinate the children of America with their beliefs, their morality, and with the 'science' that the universe was created in six days."
-- Yefim Galkine "'Analytical review' from whom? Politicians? Parents' groups? Church councils? Bureaucrats? Lobbyists?

Scientists have been doing legitimately qualified 'analytical review' of evolution for more than a hundred fucking years, and what they concluded should be taught in the goddamned classroom. Holy fuck, do I ever hate stupid assholes like this."
-- Michael Wong, responding to a thread at his forum by which the article titled "Ohio governor wants to 'criticize evolution'" is being discussed "Wit is educated insolence."
-- Aristotle "By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."
-- Socrates "In the end that's all we have: our memories -- electrochemical impulses stored in eight pounds of tissue the consistency of cold porridge. In the end they define our lives."
-- Remembrance of the Daleks (page 160) "It was only a small explosion. They couldn't understand how blowing up the art room was a creative act."
-- Ace, "Dragonfire", Doctor Who "Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: 'I feed on your energy.'"
-- Addenda to Orders in Council The Emperor Paul Muad'dib. in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other."
-- Francis Bacon "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
-- Albert Einstein "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."
-- Martin Luther King Jr. "IDers think that evolution is false. They dress up their idiocy in voluminous bullfuckery, but the basic argument is identical to that of creationists: they believe evolution theory does not work. They just don't bother to name the invisible man in the sky who created the biosystem through unnamed, untestable, and indescribable mechanisms."
-- Michael Wong "That last sentence is wrong. One of the first things every child learns is a vague grasp of the law of gravity; those too stupid to figure out how it works become XTreme Sports fanatics and die an early death. Similarly, a lack of knowledge of what electricity is, or how corrosive chemicals tend to interact with the human body are all likely to end your life prematurely. So no, while someone can live without knowing anything about art or history, he MUST learn a few scientific concepts in order to survive, unless he gets through life on monstrous helpings of sheer dumb luck."
-- Michael Wong, responding to the last sentence in the post a member of his forum submitted, which says "Some humans are even able to live without knowing anything about science or art or history even..." (while in pain) "Organs... surrendering like... the French..."
-- Black Mage, 8-Bit Theater "Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot "It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works -- that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot "A scientific colleague tells me about a recent trip to the New Guinea highlands where she visited a stone age culture hardly contacted by Western civilization. They were ignorant of wristwatches, soft drinks, and frozen food. But they knew about Apollo 11. They knew that humans had walked on the Moon. They knew the names of Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins. They wanted to know who was visiting the Moon these days."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (page 281) "It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas... If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you... On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones."
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism" (1987) "An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
-- Thomas Paine, "Dissertation on First Principles of Government" "...for what is the amount of all his prayers but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say: Thou knowest not so well as I."
-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (Part 1) "If you have studied history at all you should know that nothing is trivial in law, where precedent actually carries weight."
-- Michael Wong "Come on, don't bash the name. They have no choice but to call it 'quarter-life crisis', because 'arrested-adolescent twenty-something go-nowhere loser crisis' sounds too insulting."
-- Michael Wong "You know, all this politically correct bullshit pisses me off. Looks matter. Anyone who says they don't is lying. Period. It's human nature, and it's incredibly annoying when people deny that and tip-toe around it. Yes, we all know appearance isn't the most important thing ever, but pretending it's not important at all is ridiculous.

Why can't people stop being so full of shit all the time? Be reasonable."
-- Brad Johnson "If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins."
-- Benjamin Franklin "Golf is a good walk spoiled."
-- Mark Twain, in "Quotable Quotes", Reader's Digest, December 1948 "I love the way fundietards...think that tolerance of people is the same thing as tolerance of stupid ideas. When we say that tolerance is good, we mean that fundie idiots should let gay people live their lives and have the same rights as everyone else. When they say 'tolerance', they mean that people who want to criticize bad ideas should be silenced. What a bunch of asstards."
-- Michael Wong "Just as an experiment, you should post this article on a fundie webboard and stick 'By the way, I worship Satan' in the middle of it in order to see if any of them notice it. In my experience, most fundies, when confronted with an article like that, will skip over most of it because they don't really want to read it, and then they'll post a cookie-cutter response."
-- Michael Wong, responding to a thread at his forum containing an article the subtitle of which is the following: "Accepting 'intelligent design' in science classrooms would have disastrous consequences, warn Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne" "There comes a point where you must call a spade a spade"
-- Martin Kemmish "Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices -- just recognize them."
-- Edward R. Murrow "The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate."
-- Euripides, Aegeus, Frag. 7 "But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long."
-- Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Vol 1, Chapter 39) "How far that little candle throws its beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world."
-- William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, / To throw a perfume on the violet, / To smooth the ice, or add another hue / Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light / To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to / garnish, / Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess."
-- William Shakespeare, King John "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous / palaces, / The solemn temples, the great globe itself, / Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; / And, like this insubstatial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.
-- William Shakespeare, The Tempest "The common people will let it go. Oh yes, they’ll sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be led, sir, driven, pushed!"
-- Alexander, A Clockwork Orange "Yes, all religion is assumed to be righteous and good by default. Unless, of course, it involves spell-casting or something absurd like that. People chanting in a different language and performing rituals hoping to compel their gods to intervene in their lives? Clearly, any Christian would find that absurd."
-- Damien Sorresso "Forgive you? Of course I forgive you. That is your God's function. Your crime is forgiven. However, your stupidity requires a response."
-- Leto II, in God-Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
-- Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954) "In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that 'a man can do as he will, but not will as he will,' has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all, has its due place."
-- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (1931) "The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling."
-- Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954) "In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963) "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. "This syndrome might be different elsewhere, but it is the one thing that I truly fear; that public education is stifiling the creativity and ingenuity that a culture requires to survive. It resurfaces in college, but it often takes a great deal of effort to reawaken it and that effort could be better spent truly educating and not deconditioning."
-- Michael Schilling "Accepting claims at face value from a source which has proven reliable and objective time and time again throughout the course of history is different from accepting claims at face value from delusional men dressing up in white and spouting prayers."
-- Damien Sorresso "I more or less favor the decision-making process to exclude those who are not properly-informed enough to make a decision. Politicians studied political science and law in school, not science. These people are acting like scientists don't have any ethics at all, and that scientists need politicians and philosophers (in addition to the common dumbass) breathing down their necks about every fucking experiment.

No. Scientists have ethics boards. Let them make the final decision, with consideration, perhaps, to input from politicians and the general public."
-- Damien Sorresso "Faith -- what is this emotion but a desperate attempt to escape from mind-burning fear?"
-- David Zindell, The Broken God (page 424) "The brown book I carry says there is nothing stranger than to explore a city wholly different from all those one knows, since to do so is to explore a second and unsuspected self. I have found a thing stranger: to explore such a city only after one has lived in it for some time without learning anything of it."
-- Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor, Chapter II: "Upon the Cataract" "[R]esolution and a plan are better than a sword, because a man whets his own edges on them."
-- Gene Wolfe, The Citadel of the Autarch, Chapter XVII: "Ragnarok -- The Final Winter" "Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious."
-- George Bernard Shaw "The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language."
-- J. Michael Straczynski "Social advancement comes by being audacious, no matter what lies the 'Don't Rock The Boat' retards spoonfeed out."
-- Martin Kemmish "Realistically, if you can push something through and keep it around long enough, public opposition tends to wane. Look at Canadian public opinion polls about gay marriage taken before and after its passage; a solid majority of Canadians now say they don't want government to bother revisiting the issue, whereas before it was passed, it was a dicey proposition. Why? Obviously, because the sky hasn't fallen, and the doomsday screaming of the fundies is starting to sound like the hysterical alarmist bullshit that it is, even in the ears of religious people. So it is possible to actually lead a country rather than running it by opinion polls."
-- Michael Wong "Whenever you see someone saying that there's no morality without God, you know that he's a fundie. If he says that he's not a full-blown fundie, he's a liar."
-- Michael Wong "Love is a very powerful force. Even more so when it's focused into a coherent beam of destruction."
-- Black Mage, "8-bit Chronicles", 8-Bit Theater "Bait, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Destiny, n. "A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for failure."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Impossible is just a word people use to make themselves feel better when they quit."
-- Vyse, Skies of Arcadia "A man of abilities and character, of any sect whatever, may be admitted to any office of public trust under the United States."
-- Edmund Randolph, American founding father's address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 10, 1788, quoted in The Founders' Constitution, 1987, quoted from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom "A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough"
-- the epitaph for Alexander The Great, the author of which is unknown "I've said it before and I'll say it again: fundies are so accustomed to 'preaching to the choir' that most of them honestly don't know how to do otherwise. That's why the most common reaction of a fundie to a skeptic is to look for an excuse to be 'offended'."
-- Michael Wong "If I saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be."
-- Thomas Robert Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population "The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle."
-- John Stuart Mill, "Civilization", London and Westminster Review (April 1836) "Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think."
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) "This is like the Iraqis officially writing 'Jews suck' into their constitution. Does it really surprise anyone?"
-- Damien Sorresso, commenting on article titled, "Vatican to bar homosexual priests: NYT" "Ultimately, this is not about science at all. This is about trying to keep scientists and their pesky conclusions under religious and political control, like it was in the good old days. Half a millennium ago. It's about religious people who are upset at scientists for pushing boundaries, ignoring their beliefs and concerns, etc. and who think those uppity scientists need to be put in their place."
-- Michael Wong, commenting on a thread by which the article titled "New evolution spat in U.S. schools goes to court" is being discussed "They're like the Japanese of alien races."
-- Jason Knupp "The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature ... [In] the formation of the American governments ... it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven ... These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."
-- John Adams, second President of the United States, quoted from A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1788 "Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

"We have solved ... the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries."
-- Thomas Jefferson, as quoted in the Letter to the Virginia Baptists (1808). This is his second use of the term "wall of separation," here quoting his own use in the Danbury Baptist letter. This wording was cited several times by the Supreme Court as an accurate description of the Establishment Clause: Reynolds (98 U.S. at 164, 1879); Everson (330 U.S. at 59, 1947); McCollum (333 U.S. at 232, 1948). "Instinct influences most human behaviour. We are capable of making rational choices that go against our instincts, but it's an open question how much that actually happens."
-- Michael Wong "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
-- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (page 18) "Theistic evolution is 'God created a really clever way of making species develop by themselves. It's called evolution'. Intelligent design is 'evolution doesn't work; God, er ... I mean ... an intelligent designer must have done it ... somehow.'"
-- Michael Wong "Isn't it interesting, that if you take improper care with a weapon (say, by randomly firing shots from your new gun without bothering to check where the barrel is pointed), you can be brought up on criminal charges, but if you purchase a dog which is powerful enough to kill and you fail to take proper care to control and train it, you get nothing but a slap on the wrist?"
-- Michael Wong "[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
-- Thomas Jefferson, "Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom" (1779), quoted from Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Writings (1984), p. 347 "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In forming a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
-- James Madison, "Federalist No. 51" "Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1801 Inaugural Address "A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people."
-- James Madison, Constitutional Convention June 29, 1787 "Besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The establishment of the chaplainship in Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights as well as of Constitutional principles. The danger of silent accumulations and encroachments by ecclesiastical bodies has not sufficiently engaged attention in the U.S."
-- James Madison, being outvoted in the bill to establish the office of Congressional Chaplain, from the "Detached Memoranda" "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
-- The U.S. Constitution, Amendment I "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
-- The U.S. Constitution, Amendment X "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
-- The U.S. Constitution's Preamble "I came, I saw, I conquered."
-- Julius Caesar, written in a report to Rome 47 B.C. after conquering Farnakes at Zela in Asia Minor in just five days "Molon Labe!"
Translation: "Come and get them!"
-- Leonidas I, King of Sparta, ca.489BC - 480BC, in response to a demand from Xerxes I of Persia that the Spartan army lay down their arms, at the Battle of Thermopylae "Travelling, sick / My dreams roam / On a withered moor"
-- Matsuo Basho (1644 -- 1694), Japanese poet. Translation by Robert Hass. Note: Basho's death poem, written while he was dying of a stomach illness "An old pond; / A frog jumps in -- / The sound of water."
-- Matsuo Basho "One of the most grotesque instances of the stolen concept fallacy may be observed in the prevalent claim -- made by neo-mystics and old-fashioned mystics alike -- that the acceptance of reason rests ultimately on 'an act of faith.'

'Faith in reason' is a contradiction in terms. 'Faith' is a concept that possesses meaning only in contradistinction to reason. The concept of 'faith' cannot antecede reason, it cannot provide the grounds for the acceptance of reason -- it is the revolt against reason.

One will search in vain for a single instance of an attack on reason, on the senses, on the ontological status of the laws of logic, on the cognitive efficacy of man’s mind, that does not rest on the fallacy of the stolen concept.

The fallacy consists of the act of using a concept while ignoring, contradicting or denying the validity of the concepts on which it logically and genetically depends.

This fallacy must be recognized and repudiated by all thinkers, if truth and reality are their goal.

In the absence of such recognition and repudiation, the gates are left open to the most lethal form of mysticism -- the mysticism that postures as 'science.'"
-- Nathaniel Branden, "The Stolen Concept" "[The] manifest object of the men who framed the institution of this country, was to have a State without religion and a Church without politics--that is to say, they meant that one should never be used as an engine for the purposes of the other.... For that they built up a wall of complete partition between the two."
-- Jeremiah S. Black, noted constitutional advocate, Essays and Speeches, D. Appleton and Co., 1885. As quoted by Leo Pfeffer, "The Establishment Clause: The Never-Ending Conflict," in Ronald C. White and Albright G. Zimmerman, An Unsettled Arena: Religion and the Bill of Rights, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990, p. 72. "Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia (1782), from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363. "It is a heretic that makes the fire, not she which burns in it."
-- William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English playwright and poet, "The Winter's Tale", Act 2, Scene 3, according to Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 87. "Even a space ape must urinate."
-- Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape "Cultural training can achieve a great deal, but no matter how brilliant the machinery of the higher centres of the brain, it needs a considerable degree of support from the lower regions."
-- Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape "By my plans was Sparta shorn of her glory,
And holy Messenia at last received back her children.
By the arms of Thebes was Megalopolis fortified,
And all of Greece became independent and free."
-- the epitaph of Epaminondas "Survival is the ability to swim in strange currents."
-- Bene Gesserit Axiom, in Dune by Frank Herbert "This is how Idiot America engages the great issues of the day. It decides, en masse, with a thousand keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the poor biologist's words carry no more weight than the thunderations of some turkey-neck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Facility in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an 'expert' and, therefore, an 'elitist.' Nobody buys his books. Nobody puts him on cable. He's brilliant, surely, but his Gut's the same as ours. He just ignores it, poor fool."
-- Charles Pierce, "Greetings from Idiot America" "If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is there that the Gut rules. Held to this standard, any scientific theory is rendered mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample. This is how there's a 'debate' over the very existence of global warming, even though the preponderance of fact among those who actually have studied the phenomenon renders the 'debate' quite silly. The debate is about making people feel better about driving SUVs. The debate is less about climatology than it is about guiltlessly topping off your tank and voting in tax incentives for oil companies."
-- Charles Pierce, "Greetings from Idiot America" "Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day."
-- Sophocles, Oedipus Rex "It is no weakness for the wisest man to learn when he is wrong."
-- Sophocles, Antigone "No other touchstone can test the heart of a man, the temper of his mind and spirit, till he be tried in the practice of authority and rule."
-- Sophocles, Antigone "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life; that word is love."
-- Sophocles "E PLURIBUS UNUM ... is the Latin motto on the face of the Great Seal of the United States; .... This phrase means one out of the many. It refers to the creation of one nation, the United States, out of 13 colonies. It is equally appropriate to today's federal system. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, members of the first committee for the selection of the seal, suggested the motto in 1776. It can be traced back to Horace's Epistles [65-8 BCE]. Since 1873, the law requires that this motto appear on one side of every United States coin that is minted."
-- Donald H. Mugridge, World Book Encyclopedia, Volume 6 (E), Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1976, p.2. "E Pluribus Unum" has appeared on most U. S. coins, beginning in the late 1790s. The motto "In God We Trust" did not appear on any U. S. coin until 1864, when "Its presence on the new coin was due largely to the increased religious sentiment during the Civil War Crisis," according to R. S. Yeoman, A Guide Book of United States Coins, 38th ed., Racine, Wisc.: Western Publishing Co., p. 89. The religious motto did not appear regularly on U. S. paper money until the 1950s. "Academy, n. A modern school where football is taught."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "So how is shamanistic or theological or New Age doctrine different from quantum mechanics? The answer is that even if we cannot understand it, we can verify that quantum mechanics works. We can compare the quantitative predictions of quantum theory with the measured wavelengths of spectral lines of the chemical elements, the behavoir of semiconductors and liquid helium, microprocessors, which kinds of molecules form from their constituent atoms, the existence and properties of white dwarf stars, what happens in masers and lasers, and which materials are susceptible to which kinds of magnetism. We don't have to understand the theory to see what it predicts. We don't have to be accomplished physicists to read what the experiments reveal. In every one of these instances -- as in many others -- the predictions of quantum mechanics are strikingly, and to high accuracy, confirmed."
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark (ch. 14, p. 250) "Such... is the respect paid to science that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recalls some well-known scientific phrase"
-- James Clerk Maxwell, as quoted by Brian L. Silver in The Ascent of Science "The problem is lazy teachers. Teaching of critical thinking skills requires considerable effort and individualized teacher-student interaction. Rote memorization, on the other hand, is easy to teach. You simply give students the material and then give them a test to see if they memorized it."
-- Michael Wong "Some people wrestle with their personal demons. I stabbed mine in the back of the head."
-- Black Mage, Episode 617: "Thinking Ahead", 8-Bit Theater "Can we get this kid a Cluepon, stat?"
-- Martin Kemmish "In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are consequences."
-- Robert Ingersoll "...he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was -- a woman."
-- Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow "It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet."
-- Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow "I will never, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. On the contrary, we are bound, you, I, and everyone, to make common cause, even with error itself, to maintain the common right of freedom of conscience."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 499 "History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Baron von Humboldt, 1813, from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 370 "The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man."
-- Thomas Jefferson, as quoted by Saul K. Padover in Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, New York, 1946, p. 165, according to Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 48 "... If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 358 "Across the ages, clergy have been interested [according to Jefferson] not in truth but only in wealth and power; when rational people have had difficulty swallowing 'their impious heresies,' then the clergy have, with the help of the state, forced 'them down their throats.' Five years later, [Jefferson] wrote of 'this loathsome combination of church and state' that for so many centuries reduced human beings to 'dupes and drudges.'"
-- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 47. According to Gaustad, the first quotes are from a letter from Jefferson to William Baldwin, January 19, 1810; the second source is a letter from Jefferson to Charles Clay, January 29, 1815 "I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives.... It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolt those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. M. Harrison Smith: Mrs. M. Harrison, August 6, 1816. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492 "He [Jefferson] rejoiced with John Adams when the Congregational church was finally disestablished in Connecticut in 1818; welcoming 'the resurrection of Connecticut to light and liberty', Jefferson congratulated Adams 'that this den of priesthood is at length broken up, and that a protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace American history and character.'"
-- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 49 "In 1820 as he described his plans for the University of Virginia to his former private secretary, William Short, Jefferson acknowledged that his plan for the first truly secular university would have opposition: weak opposition (in his view) from the College of William and Mary, but strong opposition from 'the priests of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous.'"
-- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 48. The letter to Short was dated 13 April 1820 "Jefferson bemoaned the pattern of church life that gave the unenlightened and bigoted clergy 'stated and privileged days to collect and catechize us, opportunities of delivering their oracles to the people in mass, and of moulding their minds as wax in the hollow of their hands.' Despite this enormous advantage, however, Virginians are liberal enough, reasonable enough, to 'give fair play' to a university [the University of Virginia] set free from dogmatisms and fixed ideas."
-- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 48 "Ignorance is no argument."
-- Baruch Spinoza, Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata et in quinque parses distincta, Part 1, Addendum; Amsterdam, 1677. A contributor to an article I read about this added: "Originally used to oppose traditional theological views that everything exists and is determined by divine intervention because no other plausible reason or explanation is seen." "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."
-- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments "From the finest lumber our mills can supply!"
-- Tomanian Dictator Aranoid Hinkel, The Great Dictator. Hinkel is responding to complaints about sawdust in the bread. "Only religion could make millions of people take a book seriously as an historical or scientific resource even when it describes talking shrubbery."
-- Michael Wong "At length the Vision closes; and the mind, / Not undisturbed by the delight it feels, / Which slowly settles into peaceful calm, / Is left to muse upon the solemn scene."
-- William Wordsworth, "A Night-Piece" "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
-- Henry David Thoreau, Chapter 1: "Economy", Walden "[I]t is contrary to the principles of reason and justice that any should be compelled to contribute to the maintenance of a church with which their consciences will not permit them to join, and from which they can derive no benefit; for remedy whereof, and that equal liberty as well religious as civil, may be universally extended to all the good people of this commonwealth."
-- George Mason, "Virginia Declaration of Rights", 1776; from Pamela Copeland and Richard MacMaster, The Five George Masons: Patriots and Planters of Virginia and Maryland, University Press of Virginia, 1989, p. 176 "We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In the enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States."
-- George Washington, letter to the members of the New Church in Baltimore, January 27, 1793; from John H. Rhodehamel, ed., George Washington: Writings, New York: Library of America, 1997, p. 834 "... Jefferson, who as a careful historian had made a study of the origin of the maxim [that the common law is inextricably linked with Christianity], challenged such an assertion. He noted that 'the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or that such a character existed .... What a conspiracy this, between Church and State.'"
-- Leo Pfeffer, Religion, State, and the Burger Court, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1984, p. 121 "A final example of Jefferson's separationism may be drawn from his founding of the University of Virginia in the last years of his life. Prepared to transform the College of William and Mary into the principal university of the state, Jefferson would do so only if the college divested itself of all ties with sectarian religion -- that is, with its old Anglicanism now represented by the Protestant Episcopal Church. The college declined to make that break with its past, and Jefferson proceeded with plans for his own university well to the west of Anglican-dominated tidewater Virginia. In Charlottesville this new school ('broad & liberal & modern,' as Jefferson envisioned it in a letter to [Joseph] Priestly of 18 January 1800) opened in 1825 with professorships in languages and law, natural and moral philosophy, history and mathematics, but not in divinity. In Jefferson's view, as reported in Robert Healey's Jefferson on Religion in Public Education, not only did Virginia's laws prohibit such favoritism (for divinity or theology was inevitably sectarian), but high-quality education was not well served by those who preferred mystery to morals and divisive dogma to the unities of science. Too great a devotion to doctrine can drive men mad; if it does not have that tragic effect, it at least guarantees that a man's education will be mediocre. What is really significant in re