Quotations home
Note: I do NOT necessarily agree with any particular quote, these are things to think about.
"Life is not a zero sum game."
"God isn't as great as you think. Hes just got good marketing."
"A computer without Microsoft Windows is like chocolate cake without the mustard."
"Help Microsoft stamp out piracy - give Linux to a friend today."
"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition." -- Isaac Asimov
"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." -- Nietzsche
"Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right."
"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson
"Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time." -- Isaac Asimov
"Science flies you to the moon, Religion flies you into buildings." -- Victor Stenger
"Curiosity is the very basis of Education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat... I say only that the cat died nobly." -- Arnold Edinborough 1922-2006
"To know that the Bible is the literature of a barbarous people, to know that it is uninspired, to be certain that the supernatural does not and can not exist
- all this is but the beginning of wisdom. -- Robert G. Ingersoll
"That Which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." -- Christopher Hitchens
"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." -- Bertrand Russel
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
"ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NO MATCH FOR NATURAL STUPIDITY."
"People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." -- Isaac Asimov
'God wanted to have a holiday, so he asked St. Peter for suggestions on where to go.
"Why not go to Jupiter?" asked St. Peter.
"No, too much gravity, too much stomping around," said God.
"Well, how about Mercury?"
"No, it's too hot there."
"Okay," said St. Peter, "What about Earth?"
"No," said God, "They're such horrible gossips. When I was there 2000 years ago, I had an affair with a Jewish woman, and they're still talking about it."'
"It is better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, the robber baron's cruelty sometimes sleeps, his cupidity sometimes satiated; but those who torment us for out own good will torment us without end,
for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C.S. Lewis
"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God." -- Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931), in Columbian Magazine
"By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none." -- Charlie Chaplin (1889 - 1931), actor and comedian
"Neither in my private life nor in my writings have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever." -- Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939), in a letter to Charles Singer
"Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope." -- P.J. O'Rourke
"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory."
-- Scott D. Weitzenhoffer
"Humanism, in all its simplicity, is the only genuine spirituality." -- Albert Schweitzer
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." -- Susan B. Anthony
"There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance." -- Goethe
"{Squawk} Pieces of eight!
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"Creationists are the best evidence yet of
the absence of intelligent design"
"Millions of innocent men, women and children,
since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and
imprisoned. What has been the effect of this 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 Religion, passed in the Assembly of
Virginia, in the Year, 1786.
"Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions, through all
the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and divided it into sects of
inextinguishable hatred for one another." -- THOMAS JEFFERSON: Letter to Thomas Whittemore, June 5, 1822
"We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance,
of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication." -- THOMAS JEFFERSON
"higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with
higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD
infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous
democracies"
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is
those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert
that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -- Charles Darwin
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
- C.A.R. Hoare
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of
human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still
primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
-- Albert Einstein
"Religion has always been the wound, not the bandage." -- Dennis Potter
"Why do programmers confuse Halloween with Christmas?
Because 31 OCT == 25 DEC."
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong
enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Man creates his gods in his own image;
and then spends the rest of his life
manipulating them to his heart's content."
"Know god, no peace.... no god, know peace."
"Make it as simple as possible, but no simpler."
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat,
plausible, and wrong." -- H L Mencken
"The bitterness of low quality is remembered long after the sweetness of
low price is forgotten," -- John Wanamaker
"Dolphins are so intelligent that within a few weeks they can
train Americans to stand at the edge of the pool and throw them
fish."
"Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent."
-- R. A. Heinlein
"Christianity:
The belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you
live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and
telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master,
so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is
present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced
by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
Makes perfect sense."
"Practice random kindness
and senseless acts of beauty"
"There is not enough love and kindness in the world
to give any of it away to imaginary beings." -- Friederich Nietzsche
"Religion, because it has been sheltered from criticism in the way it has
been allows people, perfectly sane, perfectly intelligent people to believe
en masse what only idiots and lunatics could believe in isolation."
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people
themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their
control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them,
but to inform their discretion by education." -- Thomas Jefferson
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china
teapot revolving about the Sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be
able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the
teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.
But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be
disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to
doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient
books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the
minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would
become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of
the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier
time."
"Well, it's a type 'M' planet, so it should at least have Roddenberries." -- Turanga Leela,
Futurama
"Where knowledge ends, religion begins." - Benjamin Disraeli
"It is far better to grasp the Universe
as it really is than to persist in delusion,
however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"One faith, one law and one standard of justice did not mean
democracy. The heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in
church and state...Christianity and democracy are inevitably
enemies...Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it
is committed to spiritual aristocracy."
"We grant God the possession of all the qualities of mind except the
one that keeps the others healthy; that watches over their dignity;
that focuses their vision true--humor." -- Mark Twain
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act
of the whole American people which declared that
their legislature should make no law respecting
an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of
separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1802
"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and
understanding." -- Marshall McLuhan
"The more people I meet, the more I like dogs (paraphrased)."
"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think."
"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the
problem." -- G. K. Chesterton
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few
engage in it." -- Henry Ford
"There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many
regulating it, It is not then, we conclude, immoral."
-- Rev. Alexander Campbell
"The extracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of property
in slaves." -- Rev. E.D. Simms, professor, Randolph-Macon College
"I draw my warrant from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments
to hold the slave in bondage." -- Rev. Thomas Witherspoon, Presbyterian,
of Alabama
"In another area of human rights, many Christian clergymen advocated
slavery, Historian Larry Hise notes in his book 'Pro-Slavery' that
ministers 'wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in
America'. He lists 275 men of the cloth who used the Bible to prove
that white people were entitled to own black people as work animals."
-- James A. Haught, "Holy Horrors"
"I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that
I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a
little his way, on account of his not having a fair show... We have
none but evidence for the prosecution and yet we have rendered the
verdict. To my mind, this is irregular."
-- Mark Twain
"...Christopher Hitchens' terrific book "God is Not Great" and
Richard Dawkins' excellent "The God Delusion," best-sellers both and
both effortlessly revealing, by way of reason and scientific fact and
sheer common sense, how organized religion has been, almost without
fail, the single most successful impediment to humankind's moral,
spiritual and even political progress throughout history."
-- Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle 12-5-2007
"Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we
accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory
identification cards, and paramilitary police on our streets, we have lost
a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest,
revolution, and mistrust of government, Subservient societies neither
maintain nor deserve freedom for long." -- Congressman Ron Paul,
August 9, 2004
"People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't
have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we
will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will
cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in
the universe.
-- Hippocrates of Cos (about 400 BC)
"Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we
accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory
identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost
a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest,
revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither
maintain nor deserve freedom for long."
- Congressman Ron Paul, August 9, 2004
"Life has got to be lived - That's all there is to it." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
"A very strong case can be made that many of the
steadfastly-religiously-convinced are actually mentally ill. The pleasant
escape from reality that they so often indulge in is no more than the
escape psychotics experience when they seek refuge from reality in a
delusional dreamworld of imaginary beliefs." -- DSM III-R
"I don't want to be your other half.
I believe that One and One make TWO."
-- Alanis Morrisette: "Not the Doctor".
"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not
understanding the world." -- Richard Dawkins
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"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw
"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons,
sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on
water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say
that *we* are the ones that need help?" -- Jon Stoll
"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses
or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not
change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of people."
-- Giordano Bruno
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations,
or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and
evidence." -- John Adams
"No matter how long a log stays in the water, it doesn't become a crocodile."
-- (Bambara Proverb)
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
-- Bertrand Russell
"To follow foolish precedents, and wink with both our eyes, is easier than to
think." -- William Cowper
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism."
-- Sir William Osler
"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which
is the exact opposite." -- Bertrand Russell
"The world would be astonished, if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments,
of those most distinguished even in popular estimation of wisdom and virtue, are complete
skeptics in religion." -- John Stuart Mill
"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence."
-- Thomas Huxley, Evolution and Ethics
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should believeth all sorts of other
ridiculous nonsense as well."
"You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has
always favoured the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated
reason." -- Voltaire
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry
lot indeed." -- Albert Einstein
"The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously."
-- Albert Einstein, Letter to Hoffmann and Dukas, 1946
"You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." -- Dean Martin
"If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me."
"Without emotion, man would be nothing
but a biological computer. Love, joy,
sorrow, fear, apprehension, anger,
satisfaction, and discontent provide
the meaning of human existence."
-- Arnold M. Ludwig---1980
" From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that
the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependant on His
protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our
world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple?" -- Thomas Paine
"Morality is moral only when it is voluntary."
"Everything is open to questioning. This does not mean all answers are equally valid."
-- Kelvin Throop
"I love the way Microsoft follows standards.
In much the same manner that fish follow migrating caribou."
-- Paul Tomblin, ASR
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any
charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his
peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian
government whether Nazi or Communist." -- W. Churchill, Nov 21, 1943
"The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead."
-- Thomas Paine, THE CRISIS
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things
without parallel." -- Ambrose Bierce, THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
"I do not believe in immortality of the individuals and I consider ethics to be an
exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."
--Albert Einstein
"A god who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; A god who interfered with human
freedom and creativity was tyrant." -- Karen Armstrong, A HISTORY OF GOD
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, that those
attending too small a degree of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."
-- James Madison
"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." -- David Hume (1711-1776)
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
-- Winston Churchill
"Do not believe in anything simple because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything because
it is spoken and rumored by man. Do not believe in anything simple because it is found written in
your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and
elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is
conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, than accept it and live up to it."
-- Buddha: Siddhartha Gautama, Indian Hindu Prince and founder of Buddhism.
Born 563 BCE Died 483 BCE
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and
intellect has intended up to forgo their use." -- Galileo Galilei
"Unfortunately, the universe will not conform itself to your fantasies. You have to manage based
on what really happens rather than what you would like to happen. This is true of personal
affairs, government and business."
"Vista EULA 4.7: TCPA / RIAA / NGSCP / AACS / WGA VIOLATION. Palladium detected driver tilt-bit
changes and Linux VM activity. HD scan in progress to document and report driver/kernel logs,
unapproved activities, and disallowed content. Revocation clause invoked. Submit an explanation,
and request an application for a probationary key to reactivate MS's software at 1-525-4.#..8@"
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
-- Seneca the Younger
"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when
every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."
-- Rod Serling
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
"Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization." -- Charles Lindbergh
"If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start
the day by tying a noose around your neck?"
"Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots."
-- Karl Kraus
"The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by
seeking we may come upon the truth." -- Pierre Abelard
"The solemn skepticism of science has replaced the sneering doubts of witty philosophers. The
more positive knowledge we gain, the more we incline to question all that has been received
without absolute proof." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"All superstition is much the same whether it be that of astrology, dreams, omen, retributive
judgment, or the like, in all of which the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled,
but neglect and pass over their failure, though it be much more common."
-- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
"I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual
perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes, but it is also necessary to
protect the young and innocent." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to
ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend." -- Samuel Johnson
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." -- William of Ockham, Quodlibeta
"The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the supression of ideas."
-- Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of
doubt." -- Galileo Galilei
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Plilip K. Dick
"The Greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." -- Sir William Osler
"We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for
which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one
speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two
are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith
when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The
substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to
strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions."
-- Bertrand Russell
"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. Do not be frightened from
this inquiry by any fear of its consequences.... If it end in a
belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in
the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the
love of others it will procure for you."
"The Christian god is a three headed monster, cruel, vengeful and
capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed
beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who
say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and
hypocrites." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Because religious belief, or non-belief is such as 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 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." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), speech 1808
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented,
there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more
unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more
contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity."
-- Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous
debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting
vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it
would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than
the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to
corrupt and brutalize mankind." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10,
1814, responding to the claim that Chritianity was part of the
Common Law of England, as the United States Constitution defaults to
the Common Law regarding matters that it does not address. This
argument is still used today by "Christian Nation" revisionists who
do not admit to having read Thomas Jefferson's thorough research of
this matter.
"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, to Jeremiah Moor, 1800
"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 civil as well as religious leaders
will always avail themselves for their own purposes."
-- Thomas Jefferson, to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813
"My country, right or wrong; to be defended when right
and righted when wrong." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The government of the United States is not,
in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
-- (Part of the Treaty of Tripoli - 1797)
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against
unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason
can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the
trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling
themselves the priests of Jesus." -- Thomas Jefferson
Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp July 30, 1816
denouncing the doctrine of the Trinity and suggesting
it to be so riddled in falsehood that only an
authoritarian figure could decipher its meaning and,
with a firm grip on people's spiritual and mental
freedoms, thus convince the people of its truthfulness.
"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that
the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are
nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot
reason otherwise ... without plunging into the fathomless abyss of
dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with
the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about
those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820
"Religion ... comprises a system of wishful illusions together
with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form
nowhere else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory
confusion." -- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), The Future Of An Illusion, 1927
"[Belief in] the supernatural was the recourse of an insufficuent imagination, a derelection of
duty, a childish evasion of the difficulty and wonders of the real."
"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." -- David Mills
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop
thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do
we" -- George W. "Shrub" Bush Aug 5, 2004
"Being surprised at the fact that the universe
is fine tuned for life is akin to a puddle being
surprised at how well it fits its hole"
-- Douglas Adams
"Custom is the plague of wise men and the idol of fools." -- Thomas Fuller
"Fundamentalist: One who's mental and wants your funds."
"Never fly on an airline whose pilots believe in reincarnation."
"I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere."
"The government ought to stay out of the prayer business." -- Jimmy Carter
"By simple common sense, I don't believe in God." -- Charlie Chaplin
"Religion is so full of inconsistencies that I could see no point in arguing each inconsistency
out. It was background noise that you ignore." -- Gene Roddenberry
"I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity." -- John Lennon
"All your western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a
senile delinquent." -- Tennessee Williams
"People call it truth, religion; I call it insanity, the denial of death as the basic truth of
life. 'What is the meaning of life?' is a stupid question." -- Jackie Mason
"If there is a supreme being, he's crazy." -- Marlene Dietrich
"Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends." -- Woody Allen
"I do not think Jesus Christ ever existed." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
"Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to
the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert." -- Phil Donahue
"How could you ask me to believe in God when there's absolutely no evidence that I can see?"
-- Jodie Foster
"So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake.... Religion is all bunk."
-- Thomas Alva Edison
"The proposition that the entire human race - consisting of enormous hordes of humanity - would
be placed it serious danger of a fiery eternity characterized by unspeakable torments purely
because a man disobeyed a deity by eating a piece of fruit offered him by his wife is
inhere incredible." -- Steve Allen
"I give money for church organs in the hope that the organ music will distract the
congregation's attention from the rest of the service." -- Andrew Carnegie
"Man has accomplished far more miracles than the God he invented." -- Rod Steiger
"Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're
schizophrenic?" -- Lily Tomlin
"It isn't true that the laws of nature have been capriciously disturbed; that snakes have talked;
that women have been turned into salt; that rods have brought water out of rocks."
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all thieve various batteries, of pious
whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of
pain." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Unlike biological evolution. 'intelligent design' is not a genuine scientific theory and,
therefore, has no place in the curriculum of our nation's public school classes."
-- Ted Kennedy
"Religious contretemps are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds that
those which spring from any other cause." -- George Washington
"I do not want church groups controlling the schools of our country." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
"Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages
that bother me are those I do understand." -- Mark Twain
"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." -- Albert Einstein
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian
assemblies." -- Benjamin Franklin
"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but
himself." -- Richard Burton
"As to the church, my friend, I am sick of it." -- Charles Dickens
"I do not want civil power combined with religious power, I want to make it clear that I am
committed as a matter of deep personal conviction to separation." -- John F. Kennedy
"Every time I was happy it (God) seemed to rear -- well, I say his ugly head. but I don't know if
it was a he or a she." -- Gene Wilder
"I am not a Christian." -- Abraham Lincoln
"Clergymen tend to be unreliable and pompous figures. Seldom Jewish rabbis, less often Catholic
priests, but Protestant ministers tend to be ... not really very admirable. Not necessarily evil,
but silly. And wrong, of course." -- Charlton Heston
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups"
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." -- Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html
"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and
concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much
bigger than our prophets sail, grander, more subtle, more elegant'?
Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him
to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence
of the Universe are revealed by modern science might be able to draw
forth reserves of reverb and awe hardly tapped by the conventional
faiths." -- Carl Sagan
"The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather that its irresponsible and
indulgent use ... of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public ..."
-- Robert F. Kennedy, former U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator, 1925-68
"A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform."
"Nuclear physics is much easier than tax law. It's rational and always works the same way."
-- Jerold Rochwald
"WARNING: You are about to enter the 'real world'. Climate controls are non functional and there
are no keyboard commands or drop down menus. There is no 'undo' function."
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it" -- Henry David Thoreau
"I'm not going to tiptoe through life only to arrive safely at death."
"The government is lying to you so why are you still listening?"
"The only difference between atheists and you is they aren't superstitious."
"God was invented by man for a reason, that reason is no longer applicable."
"Rid yourself of superstition, kick God to the curb."
"This alternating current stuff is just a fad. It is much too dangerous for general use."
-- Thomas Alva Edison
"Money cannot buy happiness, but it lets you be unhappy in nice places."
"A friend is someone you'd spend an hour with if you had a day to live,
not an hour to kill."
" DISCLAIMER
If you find a posting or message from me
offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please
ignore it. If you don't know how to ignore a posting,
complain to me and I will demonstrate."
"Curiosity skilled the cat."
"A man's ethical behavior should be based on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; 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
"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator
correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult
mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the
prosperous democracies."
"The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars, and miseries than
any other name has caused. The darkest wrongs are still inspired by it."
-- John E. Remsburg
"We're all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may
not have made." ...Governor George W. Bush
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of
arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside,
thoroughly used up , totally worn out and loudly proclaiming;
WOW!!! What a ride."
"What matters in science is data...and explanations of the natural
world that are consistent with those data...Evolution has not
attained the level of theory because people believe in it, but
rather because it is an explanation that is consistent with hundreds
of years of data collection as described in tens of thousands of
scientific manuscripts." -- Casey Hoy, Wooster, MA School Board
"If fascism ever comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and
carrying a cross." -- Upton Sinclair, Huey P. Long, and others.
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do
because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
-- Susan Brownell Anthony, in 1896, addressing the National American Woman Suffrage Association
meeting
"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever
conceived."
-- Isaac Asimov
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature,
and it remains premature today."
--Isaac Asimov, "On Religiosity," Free Inquiry
"Status Symbol: n. Something that you don't want, that you buy
with money that you don't have, to impress people that you
don't know."
"Nothing is worse than active ignorance." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"Q: Why did the chicken cross the moebius strip?
A:To get to the same side."
"Girl: My Dad sometimes takes things apart to see why they don't go.
Boy: [grunt] So...?
Girl: So you'd better go."
"Having a 'no smoking section' in a restaurant is like having a
'no pissing section' in a swimming-pool." -- Victor Lewis-Smith
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? When why call him God?"
-- Epicurus (341 - 270 BC)
"Giving government money and power is like giving car keys and whiskey to a
teenage boy." -- P.J. O'Rourke
"The glass, being topologically equivalent to a finite flat sheet, can be neither 'full' nor
'empty' : it may or may not have some beer balanced on it."
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake
off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable -
a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Religion has always been the wound, not the bandage." -- Dennis Potter
"There would be a lot more civility in this world if people
didn't take that as an invitation to walk all over you"
"Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish."
"Only fools and children accept things on faith. The rest of us require evidence."
"Intelligent Design?" my knees say *not*.
"Intelligent Design?" my back says *not*.
More like "Incompetent design".
"COMPONENT EQUIVALENCY NOTICE: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons,
Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every
Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers,
and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied."
-- Susan Hewitt and Edward Subitzky, "A Call for More Scientific Truth
in Product Warning Labels"
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored" -- Aldous Huxley
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
-- Anatole France
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop
thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do
we," -- George W. "Shrub" Bush Aug 5, 2004
"A Prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support." -- Ambrose Bierce
"An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason."-- C. S. Lewis
"Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt." -- Clarence Darrow
"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
"Because religious belief, or non-belief is such as 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 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." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), speech
1808
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with
another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting
and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine
for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that
promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words,
government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of an advance auction sale of
stolen goods." -- H.L. Mencken
"Contrary to the fantasies of the fundamentalists, there was no deathbed conversion, no last
minute refuge taken in a comforting vision of a heaven or an afterlife. For Carl, what mattered
most was what was true, not merely what would make us feel better. Even at this moment when
anyone would be forgiven for turning away from the reality of our situation, Carl was
unflinching. As we looked deeply into each other's eyes, it was with a shared conviction that our
wondrous life together was ending forever." -- Ann Druyan
"I find it absolutely incredible that a creator god and his savior son would, instead of coming
down to earth and handing us their message personally, chooses to communicate with mankind
through cheese sandwiches."
"I challenge anyone to present a more disingenuous religion than Christianity. Just where in hell
do we find a system bent on filching scandalous amounts of money off the weak-minded? Where do we
find more wealthy Pastors or Ministers talking out of both sides of their mouths while their
pockets swell to obscene proportions? What religion does more to intellectually damage youth
while getting rich off their ignorance?"
"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."
-- David Hume
"Make no mistake about it: an effective and true democracy
is wholly dependent on both a caring -and- a properly informed
public!"
- Somebody
"Pick the topic you like: the Middle East, international
terrorism, Central America, whatever it is - the picture
of the world that's presented to the public has only the
remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is
buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies."
-- from "Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements
of Propaganda", Noam Chomsky
"I challenge anyone to present to me a more disingenuous religion than
Christianity. Just where in hell do we find a system bent on filching
scandalous amounts of money off the weak-minded? Where do we find more
wealthy Pastors or Ministers talking out of both sides of their mouths
while their pockets swell to obscene proportions? What religion does more
to intellectually damage youth while getting rich off their ignorance?"
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea - massive, difficult to redirect,
awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least
expect it."
"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." -- Niels Bohr
"There is no superstition in wisdom, and no wisdom in superstition."
"Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not
sufficient capital to form a corporation." -- Clarence Darrow
"I went to a planet where the dominant lifeform had no bilateral symmetry,
and all I got was this stupid F-Shirt."
"When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares
that it is his duty." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"It is more uplifting to find the beauty, wonder, spirituality, and
reverence in what we can see, than to imagine they only exist in what we
can't see."
"When utensils were invented, the Catholic church condemned them."
"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does
not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does
not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that
mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity
of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has
prepared himself for the commission of every other crime."
-- Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason"
"The measure of (mental) health is flexibility (not comparison to some 'norm'),
the freedom to learn from experience...to be influenced by reasonable arguments...
and the appeal to the emotions...and especially the freedom to cease when sated.
The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable
patterns." -- Lawrence Kubie
"Never react emotionally to criticism. Analyze yourself to determine whether it is justified.
If it is, correct yourself. Otherwise, go on about your business." -- Norman Vincent Peale
"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." -- David Hume
"Religion is the original war crime." -- Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."
-- Mark Twain
"The thing that saved me was Upanishads; Hinduism. Where you have
practically the same mythology [as Roman Catholicism], but it has been
intellectually interpreted. Say, already in the 9th century BC the Hindus
realized that all the deities are projections of psychological powers and
they are within you not out there [points away]."
-- Joseph Campbell in The Hero's Journey
"My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn't."
"As Benjamin Franklin left the State House in Philadelphia
on the closing day of the Constitutional Convention, a woman
asked him what kind of government the statesmen had given America.
Franklin replied: 'A republic, Madame, if you can keep it.'"
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-- Voltaire
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
"You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among
sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an
exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which
unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the
United States."
-- Richard Dawkins
"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."
--Bertrand Russell
"I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out." -- Judge Harry Stone
"Never express yourself more clearly than you think." -- Niels Bohr
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you
have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Ignorance of fact is not evidence of fiction"
"I think that naming your ignorance God and pretending that, having named it. you have converted ignorance to
knowledge is a sorry approach to the unknown."
"The elevation of PRIDE to the status of a sin was not a happenstance in Catholic theology, but rather a cold
blooded calculated move that was necessary to enable the Church to control people. In order to bind them to
Church authority, first it had to deprive them of their self respect."
"I take a strong interest in religion because it is an evil and destructive presence in society. It promotes ignorance
as the highest truth, and blind obedience to what your church tells you as the highest virtue. It preaches guilt for
thought-crime, condemns people for healthy, normal activities, and murders those that hold different beliefs. It
cripples the mind, oppresses the soul, and enslaves the body."
"Were I to be of the opinion that there was a God, and that that God was of the Christian ilk, it would be morally
impossible to choose to be with a God who imposes unending torment on some people. To do so is to be
complicit in their torture and as responsible for it as the one who imposes it. It'd be like knowing about Auschwitz
yet continuing to support Hitler. If there is a Heaven, it's for those that can stomach it."
"You mean you LIKE the thought that you've been created especially to worship your creator, and after you die
you'll honor it throughout eternity? That's your purpose in existence -- th be a cosmic cheering squad for a deity so
vain and insecure that it needs constant reassurance that it's supreme. No thank you!"
"We don't have integrity, we have God." -- 2bHis
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government
has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't
enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a
crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." -- unknown
_
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as
when they do it from religious conviction."
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pense'es, #894.
"And remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg." -- Samuel Butler
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain
the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the
government." -- Patrick Henry
"Man's Mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"If there's nothing wrong with me ... maybe there's something wrong with the universe!"
-- Dr. Crusher, Star Trek: The Next Generation "Remember Me"
"The Universe is a spheroid region, 705 meters in diameter."
-- Computer, Star Trek: The Next Generation "Remember Me"
"Why is it that when a person is very good at what they do, that's taken to mean they should be doing
something else" -- Kelvin Throop
"People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization."
-- Agnes Repplier
"many of lifes failures are people that did not realise how close they where
to success before they gave up. "
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -- Mark Twain
"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 in Albert Einstein: The Human
Side , edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman,
and published by Princeton University Press.
"This would be the best of all possible worlds,
if there were no religions in it." -- JOHN ADAMS
"How has it
happened that millions of myths, fables, legends and tales have been
blended with Jewish and Christian fables and myths and have made them
the most bloody religion that has ever existed? Filled with the sordid
and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud?"
-- JOHN ADAMS: Letters to F.A. Van Der Kamp 1809-1816
"Millions of innocent men, women and
children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt,
tortured, fined, and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this
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 Religion, passed in the Assembly of Virginia, in the Year, 1786
"Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions,
through all the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse,
and divided it into sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another."
-- THOMAS JEFFERSON: Letter to Thomas Whittemore, June 5, 1822
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep
forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil
of Europe with blood for centuries." -- JAMES MADISON
"The government of the United
States not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
-- GEORGE WASHINGTON--Treaty of Tripoli 1796
"Men become civilized not in their willingness to believe, but in
proportion to their readiness to doubt." -- H. L. Mencken
"There are none so blind as those who view life filtered
through the stained glass of church windows."
"Science is open to criticism, which is the opposite of religion. Science begs
you to prove it wrong - that's the whole concept - whereas religion condemns
you if you try to prove it wrong. It tells you to accept it on faith and shut
the hell up." -- Jason Stock
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to
evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of,
the lack of evidence." -- Richard Dawkins
"Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human
nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth
unless frightened by a belief in God. No lower opinion
of the human race has ever been expressed."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
"None of the Emperor's clothes had been so successful before.
'But he has got nothing on,' said a little child."
"Men become civilized not in their willingness to believe, but in
proportion to their readiness to doubt." -- H. L. Mencken
"Churches are becoming political organizations....It probably will not be long
until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological
questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold
the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is
not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in
partnership, man is a slave." -- Robert Green Ingersoll, 1879
"Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and
further life; it is bad to damage and destroy life."
-- Albert Schweitzer
"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty
Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work
-- Adolf Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936
"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the
Almighty Creator." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp, 46
"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so" -- Adolf Hitler,
to Gen.Gerhard Engel, 1941
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,
of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society
highly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselves
and to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed
perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."
-- R.D. Laing
"Without faith we might relapse into scientific or rational thinking, which
leads by a slippery slope toward constitutional democracy."
-- Robert Anton Wilson
"The argument that there must be a first cause is one that cannot have
any validity. If anything must have a cause, then God must have a cause.
If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the
world [universe, everything that exists] as God." -- Lord Bertrand
Russell (1872 - 1970)
"Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for
everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections
are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence
to religious principles" -- James D. Watson
"If you are ethical only because you believe in God, you are buying your
ticket to heaven or trying to tear up your ticket to hell. In either case,
you are just being a shrewd profiteer, nothing else. The idea of being
ethical is to be ethical for no reason except that that is the way to be if
you want the world to run smoothly. I think that people who say virtue is
its own reward or honesty is the best policy have the right idea."
-- Isaac Asimov
"The atheist does not say "there is no God," he says "I know not what you mean by
God; I am without idea of God; the word 'God' is to me a sound conveying no clear
or distinct affirmation. ... The Bible God I deny; the Christian God I disbelieve
in; but I am not rash enough to say there is no
God as long as you tell me you are unprepared to define God to me.""
-- Charles Bradlaugh, "Plea for Atheism"
"If you can't Imagine a better world, you can't change this one."
"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still
thinking." -- Jerry Seinfield
"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." -- Wilson Mizner
"A common mistake people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools."---- Douglas Adams
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government
has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't
enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a
crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
" 404
The thought cannot be displayed
The idea you are looking for is currently unavailable. The brain might be
experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your attitude
settings"
"Calling someone an asshole for being rude to a telemarketer
is like accusing someone who's shot a burglar in his home
of being a poor host." -- W.S.Rowell
"It would be very unlikely for unlikely events not to occur." -- J.A Paulos "Innumeracy"
"You can't separate peace from freedom, because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
-- Malcolm X
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to
realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
-- Ronald Reagan
"Religion is for those who don't have faith in themselves."
"Who says I am not under the special protection of God?"
-- Adolph Hitler
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and stupidity. I am not so sure
about the former..."
"Life is like a 10-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use."
-- Charles Schulz
"I'm not afraid to die; I just don't want to be there when it happens." -- Woody Allen
"To get where you're going, you have to start where you are."
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for
granted." -- Bertrand Russell
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to
have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb
contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to
teenage boys." -- P.J. O'Rourke (1947- )
"Love your country, but never trust its government." -- Robert Heinlein (1907-1988)
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause
and reflect. -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)"
"Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other. They slander each
other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse and cannot come to any sort of
agreement in their teachings. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own
with deceitful nonsense, and makes perfect little pigs of those it wins over to its
side." -- Celsus (2nd century C.E.)
"Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves." -- Horace Mann
"Faith is believing something you know ain't true." - Samuel Clemens "Mark
Twain", American author
"The moment you alter your perception of yourself and your future, both you and your future begin to change." -- Marilee Zdenek
"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." -- Benjamin Franklin
"It is part of the cure to wish to be cured." -- Senecs
"End Oppression! Get educated and so you can stop acting like sheep and stand
up for yourself!"
"They are not jackbooted Nazi thugs. They are merely German policemen in spiffy uniforms here to help us."
- Vichy government (1941 - 1945)
"The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong; it's like demanding that
grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak." -Robert A.
Heinlein
"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it."
-- Andre Gide
"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, Androcles and he Lion, Preface (1916)
"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose
of common sense." - Chapman Cohen
"If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for
attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought - not free thought for
those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"If *every*thing is a high priority, then nothing is"
"[Timothy Leary] was asked whether drugs were a bad influence on young kids, and
he said, 'This is nothing. In a few years kids are going to be demanding septal
electrodes.'"
"to be yourself, in a world that tries, night and day, to make
you just like everybody else - is to fight the greatest battle
there ever is to fight, and never stop fighting" -- e.e. cummings
"The idea that there is an invisible being who created and still runs this old universe is so childish, so obviously contrived, that it is hard to
believe anyone with even a modicum of education can still fall for that scam."
"This is not a dress rehearsal. This is the only world you will ever know and this is the only life you will ever have. Seize the Day."
"It was believed that by the aid of the Devil could assume any shape they wished, Wizards and witches were changed into wolves, dogs, cats and
serpents. Within two years, between 1598 and 1600, in one district of France, the district of Jura, more than six hundred men and women were tried
and convicted before one judge of having changed themselves into wolves, and all were put to death, This is only one instance. There were thousands.
-- Robert Ingersoll, "The Devil"
"In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed,
miracles ceased; but in those parts that are barbarous and ignorant,
miracles are still in vogue." -- Letters of Ethan Allen to Thomas Jefferson
"The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with
lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence,
and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the
possibilities of knowledge." -- Thomas Henry Huxley
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human
soul" -- Mark Twain
"My religion is to do good." -- Thomas Paine
"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H. Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine
adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous
notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history."
--- Robert A. Heinlein
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it
does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that
its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign,
I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented
myself from Christian assemblies."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of
science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal
harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme
Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable
of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine and murder; for
the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man."
-- Thomas Paine
"The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of
nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on nothing; it proceeds by no
authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing and admits of no
conclusion."
-- Thomas Paine
"Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition
and dogmatism cannot confine it."
-- John Adams
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of
the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross.
Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
-- John Adams
"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian
Religion." -- President George Washington
"I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature." -- President Thomas
Jefferson
"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion." -- President
Abraham Lincoln
"A just government has no need for the clergy or the church." -- President
James Madison
"I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end ...
where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his
choice." -- President John F. Kennedy
"My country, right or wrong; to be defended when right and righted when wrong."
- Thomas Jefferson
"I love God, he's so deliciously evil" -- Stewie on 'Family Guy'
"I hope, for His sake, that God does not exist -- because if He does He has an awful lot to answer for." -- Philip K. Dick
"Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can
believe anything -- just give him time to rationalize it."
-- Robert Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice
"Ignorance is self-inflicted stupidity." -- Barry B. Longyear, The Tomorrow Testament
"What doesn't kill you, marks you sore." -- Jerry Oltion
"To assume the existence of an unperceivable being ... does not facilitate understanding
the orderliness we find in the perceivable world."
-- Letter to an Iowa student who asked, What is God? July, 1953; Einstein Archive 59-085
"I can't activate two neurons simultaneously, and I vote"
-- The theistic majority
"Jesus got stuck in the chimney flue.
Jesus got stuck, we don't know what to do.
Now that virgin-born Jew is turning blue,
Cause Jesus got stuck in the flue."
"Put your trust in Allah, but tie up your camel
first." -- Arab proverb
"Two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer"
- Unknown
"Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not protect
him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires, and clothing will.
To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even
patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered
since the beginning of the world." -- Robert G. Ingersoll
"Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other. They slander each
other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse and cannot come to any sort of
agreement in their teachings. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own
with deceitful nonsense, and makes perfect little pigs of those it wins over to its
side."
-- Celsus (2nd century C.E.)
"If God dwells inside us,
like some people say,
I sure hope he likes enchiladas,
because that's what he's getting."
-- Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious
conviction."
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
"This is not a dress rehearsal. This is the only
world you will ever know and this is the only
life you will ever have. Seize the Day."
"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid
consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and
ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who
works on the basis of reward and punishment."
-- Letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
-- Winston Churchill
"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers
exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here...
it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre
and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened." -- Douglas Adams
**** (skepticism) Bumper Stickers
"Skeptics don't play rush-in roulette."
"A skeptic is in know doubt!"
"If there's room for doubt -- doubt!"
"Skepticism -- It stands to reason!"
"A skeptic is a no nonsense kinda guy."
"Occam not hokum!"
"If reason don't 'splain it, disdain it!"
"Skepticism -- Reasonable doubt!"
"Skeptics don't no it all -- but they no what they should."
"Skeptics like to get a second opinion first."
****
"If we assume that man does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory
that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder." -- H. L. Mencken
"Ad Imaginem Dei Creavit Illum" (1922)
"I turned to speak to God
About the world's despair;
But to make bad matters worse
I found God wasn't there."
-- Robert Frost (1874-1963)
"You can't escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"FAITH, n Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge,
of things without parallel." -- Ambrose Bierce, the Devil's Dictionary (1906)
"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking."
-- Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)
"I think the world is run by C-students" -- Al Maguire
"Some people miss the message because they are too busy checking the spelling." - NW
"There was never such a gigantic lie told as the fable of the Garden of Eden."
"If there is a supreme being, he's crazy." -- Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992), quoted in Rave magazine, November 1986
"... Belief in God is irrational to the point of absurdity; and ... this irrationality, when manifested in specific
religions such as Christianity, is extremely harmful." -- George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God
"I don't see any god up here." -- Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968), Soviet cosmonaut
"The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people." -- Benito Mussolini (1883-1945),Italian dictator
"I don't see how anybody can read the Bible and believe it's the word of God, or believe that it's anything but a
barbarous story of a barbaric people." -- Culbert Olson, governor of California (1938-43)
"The Old testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief-call it what you will-than any book ever
written; is has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course." A.A. Milne (1882-1956), English playwright, novelist, and children's writer
"There is a very intimate connection between hypnotic phenomena and religion." -- Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), British psychologist
"I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
-- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), from a speech given in Toronto, 1930
"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 (1856-1950),
quoted by Julian Huxley in religion Without Revelation
"There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe."
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Religion ... comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an
isolated form nowhere else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion."
-- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), The Future Of An Illusion, 1927
"When a man is freed of religion, he has a much better chance to live a normal and wholesome life."
-- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
"Formal religion was organized for slaves: it offered them consolation which earth did not provide."
-- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age, and then it is almost
impossible to do anything with them. Incurably religious-that is the best way to describe the mental condition of
some people. Incurably religious." -- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), conversation with Joseph Lewis on December 3, 1929,
reported in Joseph Lewis, Atheism And Other Addresses
"Fierce invectives against women form a conspicuous and grotesque portion of the writings of the Church fathers."
-- William E. H. Lecky (1838-1903), Irish historian
"It is as clear as the sun and as evident as day that there is no God and that there can be none."
-- Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), German philosopher
"I particularly request that no Christian mummeries or tomfooleries be performed at my grave, but that I be buried as
an agnostic." -- John Sholto Douglas, 8th Marquis of Queensberry (1844-1900), English sportsman
"Religion is a collective insanity." -- Mikhail A. Bakunin (1814-1876), Russian anarchist and writer
"The idea of god implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty
and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind in both theory and practice." -- Mikhail A. Bakunin (1814-1876), Russian anarchist and writer
"The atheist does not say, 'There is no God', but he says 'I know not what you mean by God; the word God is to me a sound
conveying no clear or distinct affirmation.'"
-- Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891), English freethinker and reformer, A Plea For Atheism, 1864
"I am no Christian." - Robert Browning (1812-1889)
"I do not believe in any revealed religion. I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in
this life, without the absurdity of speculation upon another."
-- George Gordon, Load Byron (1788-1824), letter to the Rev. Francis Hodgson, 1811
"The fable of a god or gods visiting the earth did not originate with Christianity."
-- Richard Carlisle (1790-1843), English writer
"Not one man in ten thousand has goodness of heart or strength of mind to be an atheist."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), to Thomas Allsop, ca. 1820
"Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as as enemy, sometimes as a hostage; often as a captive and more often as a
child." -- Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832)
"I know of no book which has been a source of brutality and sadistic conduct, both public and private, that can compare
with the Bible." -- Sir James Paget (1814-1899), surgeon, pathologist, and friend of Darwin, Huxley, Pasteur, Prime
Minister Gladstone, and writers Tennyson, Browning, and Eliot
"Science has done more for the development of Western civilization in 100 years than Christianity did in 1,800 years."
-- John Burroughs (1837-1921)
"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without
examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand
from other nonexaminers, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Many of these people have the reasoning facility, but no one uses it in religious matters."
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions , during all eternity, the dear souls
whose highest and only ambition is to obey." -- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), "Individuality"
"To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all creeds." -- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), "Some Mistakes Of Moses"
"There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"The history on intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels." -- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899),
"Christianity has always opposed every forward movement of the human race. Across the highway of progress it has always
been building breastworks of bibles, tracts, commentaries, creeds and dogmas." -- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Church teachings are but fiction. I have knowledge of their inanity." -- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence." -- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
"The Bible account of the creation of Eve is a preposterous fable." -- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
"The foundation of morality is to ... give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and
repeating unintelligable propositions about things beyond the possibility of knowledge."
-- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), Essays On controversial Questions
"I cannot see one shadow or title of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomena of the universe stands to un
in the relation of a father, who loves us and cares for us as Christianity asserts."
-- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
"Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
"Heaven might be defined as a place men avoid." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Excursions, 1863
"The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the
Christian religion." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)
"The Bible and Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation."
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)
"All through the centuries, scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery
which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture. Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more
impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions of earth." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)
"How could any woman believe that a loving and merciful God would, in one breath, command Eve to multiply and replenish
the earth, and in the next, pronounce a curse upon her maternity? I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code,
or gave out the laws about women which he is accused of doing." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)
"The Bible contains some of the most sublime passages in English literature, but is also full of contradictions,
inconsistencies, and absurdities." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)
"I am not a Christian." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"It is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity
and honor." -- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
"Christianity peoples the earth with demons, hell with men, and heaven with slaves."
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
"The educated man ceases to be religious." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
"It is among men of genius and science that atheism alone is found." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
"There is no God." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), opening line of The Necessity Of Atheism, 1811
"The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives in
America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place." -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"You may always observe that faith and knowledge are related as the scales of a balance; when one goes up, the other
goes down." -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"I do not think Jesus Christ ever existed." -- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"Knowledge and history are the enemies of religion." -- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"The sensible man leaves the future world [hereafter] out of consideration." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."
-- James Madison (1751-1836), letter to William Bradford, Jr., January 24, 1774
"the purpose of seperation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." -- James Madison (1751-1836), 1803 letter objecting to the use of government land for churches
"The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more
unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.
Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid
or produces only atheists of fanatics. An an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of
wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or
hereafter." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the
unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it
the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize
mankind." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
"...The Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion..."
-- John Adams (1735-1826), treaty with Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S. senate and signed by President Adams on
June 10, 1797
"What can be more ridiculous than to suppose than Omnipotent Goodness and Wisdom created [a heaven] and will select the
most virtuous of its creatures to sing His praises to all eternity? It is an idea that I should think could never have
entered but into the head of a king, who might delight to have his courtiers sing birthday odes forever."
-- Walpole, letter to William Nelson, November 8, 1783
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
"Skepticism is the first step towards truth." -- Denis Diderot (1713-1784, Pensees philosophiques
"The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath."
-- Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
"Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. But what shall we substitute in its
place? you say. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this
beast, and you ask me what you shall put it it's place?" -- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Christians have been the most intolerant of men." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power or reasoning."
-- Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764
"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world."
-- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"They define God's nature as spirit incorporeal and then confess their definition to be unintelligable."
-- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
"The foolish renounce this world and pursue an imaginary world to come." -- Giordano Bruno (1548-1600),
Italian philosopher
"What excellent fools religion makes of men." -- Ben Jonson (1572-1637), English poet and playwright
"Christianity is a pestilent superstition." -- Tacitus (55-120 CE), Roman poet
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." -- Seneca
(4 BCE - 65 CE), Roman philosopher and dramatist
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues" -- Abraham Lincoln
"Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work
without any intention of paying for it.
I'm not talking about Napster-type software.
I'm talking about major-label recording contracts." --
Courtney Love
"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
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you
will understand why I dismiss yours." - - Stephen Roberts
"I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious --
except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind and keep them shut by force." -- Mark Twain,
Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals
"It was the schoolboy who said, 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so.'."
-- Mark Twain, Following the Equator
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal
class except Congress." -- Mark Twain, Following the Equator
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." -- Sir Winston Churchill, British
Prime Minister, 1940s, 1874-1965
"Sentience and Intelligence are alike- You rarely know it's missing if
you don't have it."
"With or without religion, you would have
good people doing good things
and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things,
that takes religion."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
MIRROR
by Cary Fellman
My face in the mirror isn't wrinkled or drawn.
My house isn't dirty - the cobwebs are gone.
My garden looks lovely, and so does my lawn.
I think I might NEVER put my glasses back on.
"Tinnitus is a pain in the neck"
"There are only 10 types of people in the world,
those who understand binary and those who don't"
"Life is bad enough already. Why should I want to invent any more of it?"
-- someone accused of making things up
"War may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always
an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each
other's children." -- (former president) Jimmy Carter
"Those who are willing to give up a little personal freedom for a
little security deserve neither freedom nor security." -- Ben Franklin
"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called
an agnostic. I do not pretend to know, where many ignorant men are
sure -- that is all that agnosticism means."
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more
derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and
more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for
belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders
the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power,
it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of
priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing
here or hereafter." -- Thomas Paine
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed, or
numbered...My life is my own." -- No. 6
"I am not a number. I am a free man." -- No. 6
"A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes."
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
"BallisticMissileIntercept.exe: This program has caused an exception
0D at address 6969:0000 in module CalculateTrajectory. Bend over, put
your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye."
"I may have invented it, but Microsoft made it popular" - IBM engineer David Bradley commenting on
the ctrl-alt-delete sequence
"Vegetarian - that's an old Native American word
meaning 'lousy hunter.'"
"All great ideas are dangerous." -- Oscar Wilde
"If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function,
it must have dissent." -- Henry Steele
"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 the State of Virginia (1781-82)
"Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional." -- NW
"Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself.
The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.
- Terry Pratchett
"Fear, in the hands of a con artist, is the way to take advantage of the innocent." - Captain Jean Luc Picard
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." -- Albert Einstein
"The trouble with the world is the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
-- Bertrand Russell
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than
those who think differently." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open." -- attributed to James De War
"Don't anthropomorphize computers; they hate that."
"Experience is not what happens to you; its what you do with what happens to you." - NW
"It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter." - Marlene Dietrich
"Words uttered under coercion are proof of loyalty to nothing but self-
interest. Love of country must spring from willing hearts and free minds,
inspired by a fair administration of wise laws enacted by the people's elected
representatives within the bounds of express constitutional prohibitions. These
laws must, to be consistent with the First Amendment, permit the widest
toleration of conflicting viewpoints consistent with a society of free men.
Neither our domestic tranquillity in peace nor our martial effort in war depend
on compelling little children to participate in a ceremony which ends in
nothing for them but a fear of spiritual condemnation. If, as we think, their
fears are groundless, time and reason are the proper antidotes for their
errors. The ceremonial, when enforced against conscientious objectors, more
likely to defeat than to serve its high purpose, is a handy implement for
disguised religious persecution. As such, it is inconsistent with our
Constitution's plan and purpose." - US Supreme Court, West Virginia State Board
of Education vs Barnette (1943)
"No citizen shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship,
place, or ministry whatsoever and that to compel a man to furnish
contributions of money for the propagation of [religious] opinions which he
disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical." - Thomas Jefferson
"In my examination, I've determined that I cannot prove
God doesn't exist, yet I can question God's existence
due to the many contradictions surrounding the teachings
of the Bible, my observations of humanity and events
that occur around me, the contradictions among religions,
the laws of science and the historical atrocities
committed in the name of God." -- Ethical Atheist
**** PC-ORIENTED BUMPER STICKERS:
"Every morning is the dawn of a new error..."
"Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted."
"COFFEE.EXE Missing - Insert Cup and Press Any Key to continue."
"Buy a Pentium IV so you can reboot faster."
"Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes."
"Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are."
"My software never has bugs. It just develops random features."
"Best file compression around: "DEL ." = 100% compression."
"The Definition of an Upgrade: Take old bugs out, put new ones in."
"BREAKFAST.COM Halted. Cereal Port Not Responding.."
"Access denied. Thought you could get in?"
"Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner."
"Bad command. Bad, bad, command! Sit! Bark! Stay!"
"Why doesn't DOS ever say "EXCELLENT command or filename?"
"As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing."
"File not found. Should I fake it? (y/n)"
"Ethernet: Something used to catch the EtherBunny."
"An error? Impossible! My modem is error correcting."
"CONGRESS.SYS Corrupted: Reboot Washington D.C? (y/n) "
"11th commandment: Desire not your neighbor's Pentium II or his 16xCD-R."
"The magic of Windows: Turns a Pentium into an XT, instantly."
"SENILE.COM found. Out Of Memory."
"Who's General Failure and why is he reading my disk?"
"Ultimate office automation: networked coffee."
"Shell to DOS... Come in DOS, this is Shell calling, do you copy?"
"All computers wait at the same speed."
"Definition of a computer: A device designed to speed up and automate errors."
"Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to continue."
"ASCII a stupid question, get a stupid ANSI!"
"Hex dump: Where witches leave their used curses."
"Do witches run spell checkers?"
"Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue."
"Press any key to continue or any other key to quit."
"Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic?"
"I used dip switches and connector wires to speed up my computer."
"It works just finE*~#^'=#:."]~'=#:."\~"
"Error! No keyboard detected. Press F1 to continue."
"Error! No mouse detected. Click here to continue."
"Error! Virus requires a different operating system."
"Ever noticed how fast Windows runs? Neither did I."
"Double your HD space, delete your operating system!"
"Is reading in the bathroom considered as multi-tasking?"
"My computer said that "Insert disk #3" but I couldn't get
more than one disk fit in at a time!"
"Bug? That's not a bug, that's a random feature!"
"The computer programmer's national anthem is
'AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!'"
"If at first you don't succeed, call it a version 1.0."
"Asking if computers can think, is like asking if submarines can swim."
"Todays UNIX command: "EXSOP" = Execute System Operator."
"Computer programming is an artform that fights back."
"Dad, what does "FORMATTING DRIVE C: 90% DONE" mean?"
"File Linking Error. Your mistake is now in every file."
"Erroneous Error. Nothing is wrong."
"Multitasking Attempted. System confused."
"System Price Error. Inadequate money spent on hardware."
"Horrible Bug Encountered. No idea what has happened."
"Windows Closed. You can't look outside now."
"Unexplained Error. Please tell the programmer how is this possible."
"Keyboard Locked. Try anything you can think of."
"Illegal Error. You are not allowed to get this error, next time you will be punished."
"Timing Error. Please wait, and wait, and wait, and wait..."
"Process running. If not ready in 10 minutes, wait longer."
"This will end your Windows session, do you wish to play another game?"
"Timeout Error. Operator fell asleep waiting for the system to boot."
"Error! Computer hungry. Insert hamburger in drive A: and press Y to continue."
****
"Prayer, the last refuge of a scoundrel" -- Lisa Simpson
"The bible teaches that women brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she
was arraigned before the judgment sent of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition
of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a
dependent on man's bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire...Here is the Bible
position of women briefly summed up." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the
strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." -- Thomas Paine
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the
citizenry into a
patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both
emboldens the
blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have
reached a fever pitch
and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will
have no need in
seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with
fear and blinded by
patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly
so. How do I know? For
this is what I have done. And I am Bush." -- George W. Bush
"As far as I am concerned, all of this airport security -- the
cameras, the questions, the screenings, the searches -- is just
one more way of reducing your liberty and reminding you that
they can fuck with you anytime they want -- as long as you're
willing to put up with it. Which means, of course, anytime they
want. Because that's the way Americans are now. They're always
willing to trade away a little of their freedom in exchange for
the feeling -- the illusion -- of security." -- George Carlin, _Napalm and Silly Putty_, 2001
"If you have a nation of men who have risen to the height of moral cultivation that they will not declare war or carry arms, for they have not so much
madness left in their brains, you have a nation of lovers, of benefactors, of true, great, and noble men." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason; and if any thing is to be hoped, every thing
ought to be tried." -- James Madison
"We cannot accept the doctrine that war must be forever a part of man's destiny." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America....This is our summons to greatness." -- Richard M. Nixon
"I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much
that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"War is not the normal state of the human family in its higher development, but merely a feature of barbarism lasting on through the transition of the race, from the savage to the scholar." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"There never was a good war or a bad peace." -- Benjamin Franklin
"A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered
with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a
world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from
its effect. "he" becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-
knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make
everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled.
An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified." -- Karen Armstrong, _A History of God_, pg. 383, speaking on Paul Tillich
"The really incredible part of Christian theology is God's demanding after
perpetrating his brutal crimes and injustices on humankind and ordering
his own son murdered--demanding that humankind honor him, worship him,
kneel down to him, and sing his praises day and night forever." -- C. W. Dalton, "The Right Brain and Religion"
"The statement that God created man in his own image is ticking
like a time bomb in the foundations of Christianity." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"We created god in our own image and likeness!" -- George Carlin
"It's a vacuous answer . . . To say that 'God made the world' is
simply a more or less sophisticated way of saying that we don't
understand how the universe originated. A god, in so far as it
is anything, is an admission of ignorance." -- Peter Atkins, British Association
for the Advancement of Science
"I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless infirmity
of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is largely responsible
for the calamities the world is at present enduring" -- William Archer (1856-1924), _Theology and War_
"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore,
totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries
since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most
uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would
make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their
feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries
and homes. I personally resent it bitterly and warn the people of Canada..." -- Isaac Asimov, Canadian Atheists Newsletter, 1994
"I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole
life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the
tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." -- Isaac Asimov
"For my money, I'll bet on reason and humanistic kindness. Even if I am
wrong I will have enjoyed my life, the existence of which is under little
dispute." -- Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"
"Now Christianity sounded good at first to the naive convert. Love,
peace, and charity - what's wrong with that? I'll tell you what's
wrong - a series of unprecedented horrors perpetrated by so called
Christians: The Inquisition, the Conquistadors, the American Indian
wars, slavery, Hiroshima and the present-day Bible Belt." -- William S. Burroughs
"All are inclined to believe what they covet, from
a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise." -- Lord Byron. Byron's Letters and Journals, vol. 3 (1974), entry for 27 Nov. 1813
"Religion is sort of like a lift in your shoes. If it makes
you feel better, fine. Just don't ask me to wear your shoes." -- George Carlin
"You're not paranoid if everybody REALLY IS out to get you"
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or
numbered! My life is my own" - No. 6
"At the height of rush hour, people on the London underground actually say
'excuse me.' Imagine what would happen if you tried an insane stunt like that
on the New York City subway. The other passengers would take it as a sign of
weakness, and there'd be a fight over who got to keep your ears as a trophy."
- Dave Barry
"No matter how hard you try, you can't throw a potato chip very far." -=Linus=-
"Moses went back up the mountain 'Excuse me, GOD, I just want to get this straight,
The Arabs get the oil, and we get to cut the ends off our what?????'"
"There is no god worth our worship." - Martin Schlottmann
"A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking."
"religion is a socio-political institution for the control of
people's thoughts, lives, and actions; based on
ancient myths and superstitions perpetrated through
generations of subtle yet pervasive brainwashing."
"Did it ever occur to you that if God wrote the Old Testament and told
the Jews to crucify or kill anybody that disagreed with them in
religion, and that this God afterward took upon himself flesh and came
to Jerusalem, and taught a different religion, and the Jews killed
him---did it ever occur to you that He reaped exactly what he had
sown?" -- R.G. Ingersoll
"A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant,
sincere in hatred, jealous, vain and revengeful, false in promise,
honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, infamous and hideous---such is
the God of the Pentateuch." -- R.G. Ingersoll
"If any man wishes to have God recognized in the Constitution of our
country, let him read the history of the Inquisition, and let him
remember that hundreds of millions of men, women and children have
been sacrificed to placate the wrath, or win the approbation of this
God." -- R.G. Ingersoll
"The Church hates a thinker for precisely the same reason a robber
dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness." -- R.G. Ingersoll
"Eternal punishment is eternal revenge, and can be inflicted only by
an eternal monster....Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless
injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal jailer hardens,
debases and pollutes even the vilest soul." -- R.G. Ingersoll
"It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a God would choose for
his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and
only ambition is to obey." -- R.G. Ingersoll
"The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in Heaven
for cash down." -- R.G. Ingersoll
"Is it possible that an infinite God created this world simply to be
the dwelling place of slaves and serfs? Simply for the purpose of
raising Orthodox Christians? That he did a few miracles to astonish
them? That all the evils of life are simply his punishments, and that
He is finally going to turn Heaven into a kind of religious museum
filled with Baptist barnacles, petrified Presbyterians and Methodist
mummies?" -- R.G. Ingersoll
"The Church in all ages and among all peoples has been the consistent
enemy of the human race. Everywhere and at all times, it has opposed
the liberty of thought and expression. It has been the sworn enemy of
investigation and intellectual development. It has denied the
existence of facts, the tendency of which was to undermine its power.
It has erected the gallows for Genius. It has built the dungeon for
Thinkers. And today the Orthodox Church is as much opposed as it ever
was to the mental freedom of the human race." -- R.G. Ingersoll
"The inventor of the plow did more good than the maker of the first
rosary; because, say what you will, plowing is better than praying." -- R.G. Ingersoll
"If you don't care where you are,
then you ain't lost."
"The Earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound.
Children no longer mind their parents, every man wants to write a book,
and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching."
-- Assyrian stone tablet, c.2800bc
"Our youth now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they
show disrespect for elders and love to chatter in places of exercise. Children
are tyrants, not the servants of the household. They no longer rise when elders
enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble
up their food and tyrannize their teachers." -- Socrates, 44 BC.
"It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will
be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste." --
Evelyn Waugh (1903-66), British novelist. Ambrose, in Put Out More
Flags, ch. 1, sct. 7 (1942).
"There can be little liberty on earth
while men worship a tyrant in Heaven." --
Thomas Payne
"All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of
the few." -- Marie Henri Beyle (Stendhal)
"If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record
of nuclear is really very good."
--Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, defending the Bush energy
plan and its proposed expansion of nuclear power
"Cocaine is God's way of saying you have too much money"
"The most enjoyable way to follow a vegetarian diet is to
let the cow eat it, and then eat the cow."
"God --
it's a wonderful idea.
It's a nice fantasy.
It's a way of keeping people in line.
It's a way of controlling people.
There is as much proof of the existence of God --
or even evidence, forget proof.
There's as much evidence for the existence of God as
there is for the existence for UFOs and extraterrestrials.
And yet, if you mention them for a moment, you're
considered outside, beyond the pale, you're a kook,
you're marginalized, you're crazy.
If you mention --
if you don't love God, then you're --
there's something wrong with you."
-- George Carlin
"religion is a socio-political institution for the control of
people's thoughts, lives, and actions; based on
ancient myths and superstitions perpetrated through
generations of subtle yet pervasive brainwashing."
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. with or
without it, you'd have good people doing good things
and evil people doing bad things, but for good
people to do bad things, it takes religion."
-- Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate
" Teaching children to pray encourages them to
ask for whatever they want instead of working for
it. Self-reliance and deity worship are
contradictory concepts."
"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning
faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying." -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
"There was a time when religion ruled the world. They called it
the Dark Ages."
"Theism is like horse laxative. If you swallow it it will leave you empty
and all you will be left with is a whole lot of shit!!"
"There is a theory which states that if anyone ever discovers exactly what
the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be
replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another
theory that states that this has already happened..."- Douglas Adams
"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is
partly the terror of the unknown, and partly, as I have said, the wish
to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in
all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole
thing--fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is
the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and
religion go hand-in-hand." --Bertrand Russell
"...brainlessness is no hindrance to
finding love and grace in Jesus Christ."
-Pastor Frank
"Is it okay to yell 'MOVIE' in a crowded firehouse?"
"The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is
yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he
granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a
snake." -H.L. Mencken
"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is
partly the terror of the unknown, and partly, as I have said, the wish
to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in
all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole
thing--fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is
the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and
religion go hand-in-hand."
-- Bertrand Russell
"I found him, I've got Jesus in the trunk"
"Who are you to criticize me for god's choice to make me an atheist?"
Sign seen on a bus "Illiterate? Write for free help."
"There is grandeur in this view of life,...that,
whilst this planet has gone cycling on according
to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
-Charles Darwin
"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a
socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave
their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy
capitalism, and become lesbians." (Pat Robertson direct mail, Summer 1992)
"Life after death" is an obvious contradiction, unless you're really into "dynamic redefinition". The "life" that exists afterward COULDN'T be the same one
that just ended irreversibly by "death".
"Medical treatment, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was aimed at
ridding the sick of "vile humours" by vomiting, purging, and bleeding. The
treatment was often the immediate cause of death. Some prescriptions called for
"letting" more blood than is now known to exist in the whole body." --
"Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts" © 1979
"You can run from yourself, but you won't get far. Where ever you go, there you are."
"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by
a whiff of science or a dose of common sense."
-- Chapman Cohen
"religion is a socio-political institution for the control
of people's thoughts, lives, and actions; based on
ancient myths and superstitions perpetrated through
generations of subtle yet pervasive brainwashing."
"Keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out"
"There are none more ignorant and useless,
than they that seek answers on their knees,
with their eyes closed."
"Any being so vain as to require worship is far from worthy of it."
"Where is the good in eternal torture?"
"Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he
will be warm for the rest of his life."
- Terry Pratchett
"I'm still out looking for myself. If you should see me, don't let me
leave until I get back, OK?"
"I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing"
"God is my favorite fictional character." -- Homer Simpson
"I used to be Irish catholic, now I'm American. You know, you grow"
-- George Carlin
"Christians, which i was until i reached the age of reason" - George
Carlin
"I don't believe in a God that doesn't exist" - Marilyn Manson
"I don't mean to be Godless, but i am" - UPO
"God is dead and no one cares" - Trent Reznor
"God thinks he's all that and a bag of chips" - David Bowie
"there are no unbeatable odds, there are no believable gods." -- Ozzie
Osborn
"if atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair colour"
"Religion is a cancer of the brain. It eats away at a persons ability
to reason, until they are a brainless zombie, willing to do what ever
they are told to do by the theistic leaders."
"There are none more ignorant and useless,
than they that seek answers on their knees,
with their eyes closed."
"Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday,
singing, "Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I
believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down.
Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it."
- Dan Barker, Preacher turned Atheist
"Is god willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is
he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him
god?"
- Epicurus (341-270 BCE)
"Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate."
- F.M. Knowles
"Here's another question I've been pondering. What is all this shit
about angels. Have you heard this? Three out of four people now believe
in angels. What are you, fuckin' stupid? Huh? Has everyone lost their
fuckin' mind in this country? Angels. Shit. YOu know what i think it
is? I think it's a massive, collected, psychotic chemical flashback of
all the drugs, ALL the drugs smoke, swallowed, snorted and absorbed
rectally by all Americans from 1960 to 1990. 30 years of adulterated
street drugs will get ya some fuckin' angels, my friend." -- George Carlin
"A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove
anything." --- Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the
politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher." - Lucretius (99 - 55 B.C.E.)
"It was well known how profitable this fable of Christ has been to us." -
Pope Leo X (as reported by Rev. Tavlor in the Diegesis)
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe
that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
- Douglas Adams
"When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing
anything to equal it."
-Oscar Wilde
"God-who is said to have created everything from nothing and to have done so
with no help from anyone is now completely helpless to do anything at all
without the assistance of an army of clergymen and the charity of a flock of
faithful followers."
-Rev. Donald Morgan
"It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain."
-Mark Twain
"[The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of
obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."
-Mark Twain
"A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what
he knows."
-Mark Twain
"Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only
animal that has the True Religion---several of them. He is the only animal
that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology
isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest
best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven."
-Mark Twain
"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and
he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
-Author Unknown
"The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense,
founded on the Christian religion." -- Treaty Of Tripoli, 1797, signed by
John Adams.
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the
abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross.
Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
- John Adams (letter to Thomas Jefferson)
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."--Benjamin Franklin
"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 United States of America should have a foundation free from the
influence of clergy."--George Washington
"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion
of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of
public happiness." -George Washington (1790)
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye to reason."
--Ben Franklin