Quotes

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

All the crap we learned about, that supposedly made the USA and the world it runs such a good and desirable place, so much better than others who had tried and died at imperializing, is shown to be papier mâché, a piñata of pomposities, begging to be bashed into a billion bits of karmic payback. — Jess Karlin (Baby steps to Monsterhood)

America is now a land of socialism for the rich and brutal capitalism for the poor. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Aritosthenese’s only tools were sticks, eyes, feet, and brains; plus a zest for experiment. With those tools he correctly deduced the circumference of the Earth, to high precision, with an error of only a few percent. That’s pretty good figuring for 2,200 years ago. — Carl Sagan

Eskimo: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?”
Priest: “No, not if you did not know.”
Eskimo: “Then why did you tell me?” — Annie Dillard

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it. — Noam Chomsky

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. — Moynihan

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. — Albert Einstein

For thirty centuries history has been iterating and reiterating that, in a moral fight, woman is simply dauntless; and we all know, even with our eyes shut upon Congress and our voters, that, from the day that Adam ate of the apple and told on Eve, down to the present day, man, in a moral fight, has pretty uniformly shown himself to be an arrant coward. — Mark Twain

Give a man a reputation as an early riser and that man can sleep till noon. — Mark Twain

Having been admonished by the Holy Office to abandon the false opinion that the Sun was the center of the universe and immovable, and that the Earth was not at the center of same and that it moved, I have been… suspected of heresy. I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the same errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. — Galileo

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable loce-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. — Albert Einstein

I am angry at the Catholic church, because it says that women can’t be priests. Right. Like my big dream is to run around in a long black dress and fuck altar boys. But I think I should have the choice. The pope agrees that women cannot be priests, and this is his reason: because there were no women priests when Jesus lived. And that’s true. But there was also no pope. Does that stop him? — E.L. Greggory

I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet. — Albert Einstein

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 like how they keep saying the science isn’t in on global warming. They just don’t know. No proof. But, of course, it’s in on God. Lots of proof on that. Tons of empirical evidence. They got God’s DNA. — Larry David

If everything 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 as God. — Bertrand Russell

If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness. — Carl Sagan

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. — George Orwell

In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. — Carl Sagan

In the USA, every day, every week, every month, every year, it becomes a little more comfortable to be a monster. — Jess Karlin (Baby Steps to Monsterhood)

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

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love. — Butch Hancock

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. — Goethe

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size. — Mark Twain

Ocean: A body of water occupying 2/3 of a world made for man—who has no gills. — Ambrose Bierce (The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911)

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship. — George Orwell

Saint Augustine argued for the mystic importance of seven on the grounds that three ‘is the first whole number that is odd’ (what about one?), ‘four is the first that is even’ (what about two?), and ‘of these… seven is composed. — Carl Sagan

Science is an enterprise which gives its highest rewards to those who disprove the views of its most revered figures. Religion is the exact opposite. Religion doesn’t want any criticism of its most revered figures. After all, the person who disproved the ultimate validity of the views on mechanics and gravitation of Isaac Newton was Albert Einstein… Newton a tremendously revered figure and Einstein revered in part because he proved Newton wrong. — Carl Sagan

Society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. — Mignon McLaughlin

Take care that no one hates you justly. — Publilius Syrus

That skeptical, questioning, ‘don’t accept what authority tells you’, attitude of science is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches and I don’t think you can have the one without the other. — Carl Sagan

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. — Magellan

The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith. — Catholic Church’s statement against Galileo

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell. — Saint Augustine

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher. — Victor Hugo

To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith, but must find his brand of intolerance. — Eric Hoffer

To the past, or to the future, to an age when thought is free, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of the thought police, from a dead man: greetings. — Winston Smith

Traveller: “God has been mighty good to your fields, Mr. Farmer.”
Farmer: “You should have seen how he treated them when I wasn’t around.” — Unknown

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense. — Leo Rosten

We know truth exists because we know liars exist. — Michael Parenti

We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering. — Carl Sagan

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself. — Peter O’Toole

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. — Emo Philips

When the atheist is told that God is unknowable, he may interpret this claim in one of two ways. He may suppose, first, that the theist has acquired knowledge of a being that, by his own admission, cannot possibly be known; or, second, he may assume that the theist simply does not know what he is talking about. — George H. Smith

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray”. We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land. — Desmond Tutu

Where are the Twins? Send in the Twins. I’d like to hear that scene. “Jenna, Barbara… Daddy and I have talked it over and we want you to go fight in Iraq. — Larry David

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat. — John Morley

With the judgment of the angels and the sentence of the saints, we anathematize, execrate, curse and cast out Baruch de Spinoza, the whole of the sacred community assenting, in presence of the sacred books with the six hundred and thirteen precepts written therein, pronouncing against him the malediction wherewith Elisha cursed the children, and all the maledictions written in the Book of the Law. /…/ Let him be accursed by day, and accursed by night; let him be accursed in his lying down, and accursed in his rising up; accursed in going out and accursed in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowledge him; may the wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn henceforth against this man, load him with all the curses written in the Book of the Law, and blot out his name from under the sky. — Catholic Church (excommunication of Spinoza, 27 July 1656)

You know you have created God in your own image, when you find that your God hates the same people that you do. — Anonymous