"A bit beyond perception's reach I sometimes believe I see that Life is two locked boxes, each containing the other's key."
― Piet Hein (1905 to 1996)
"A book must be an ice ax to break the frozen sea within us."
― Franz Kafka (1883 to 1924)
"A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention."
― Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894 to 1963)
"A citizen-proper is not one by virtue of residence."
― Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs, Aristotle (circa 384bce to 322bce)
"A dirty joke is a sort of mental revolution."
― George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair (1903 to 1950)
"A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind."
― Albert von Szent-Györgyi, Albert Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt,
[Nagyrápolti Szent-Györgyi Albert.] (1893 to 1986)
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
― William Blake (1757 to 1827)
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"A goal is a dream taken seriously."
― Henry David Thoreau (1817 to 1862)
"A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence."
― Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 to 1973) in The Greeks and Us
"A good indignation brings out all one's powers."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"A good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge"
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. Thus the Master is available to all people and doesn't reject anyone. He is ready to use all situations and doesn't waste anything. This is called embodying the light."
― 老子, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tzu (possibly somewhere in the period: 1100 to 400bce) as translated by Stephen Mitchell (1992)
"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"A gun gives you the body, not the bird."
― Henry David Thoreau (1817 to 1862)
"A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them."
― Horace Mann (US educator, the first great American advocate of public education, 1796-1859)
"A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, 'We did this ourselves.'"
― 老子, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tzu (possibly somewhere in the period: 1100 to 400bce)
"A lifetime is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child. "
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"A man without faith is like a fish without a bicycle"
― Charles S. Harris (born 1937)
"A man's character is his fate."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"A mind's journey begins with a single why?"
― 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi [Confucius] (circa 551bce to 479bce)
"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."
― Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"A natural talent is required; for, when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits."
― Ἱπποκράτης, Hippokrates of Kos (circa 460bce to 377bce)
"A Puritan is someone who's whole life is based on the great fear, that somebody, somewhere, somehow . . . may be having a good time!"
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
― attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero (106bce to 43ce)
"A rose by any other name is more confusing."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"A very popular error ― having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one's convictions."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
― Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Alban, King's Counsel (1561 to 1626)
"Whate'er of mungril no one class admits, a wit with dunces and a dunce with wits."
― Alexander Pope (1688 to 1744) refering to the middle class of Dunces in book IV of the Dunciad
"A witty saying proves nothing."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle!"
― Irina Dunn
"Ability without honour has no value."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"All rising to great place is by a winding stair."
― Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Alban, King's Counsel (1561 to 1626)
"All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
― Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 to 1860)
"All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was inundated with blood, which was shed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities."
― William E. H. Lecky, 1838-1903, Irish historian, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (Appleton, 1866) Volume II, p. 32, according to Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 58.)
"Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them."
― François Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613 to 1680)
"Almost half of Americans think the phrase 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need' comes from the US Constitution.
― from a poll in a September 13, 1987 Boston Globe story, source: Chomsky's Necessary Illusions
"Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality. All proffered samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to common tests. It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse. The characteristic of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generally known; authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary ways . . . It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists, there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics where the method of free inquiry has made its way. The "religious" would be the last to be willing that either the history of the content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device, but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against its being taught in any other spirit."
― John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher, from Democracy in the Schools, 1908
"Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of 'free contract' between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else."
― Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
"And of all illumination which human reason can give, none is comparable to the discovery of what we are, our nature, our obligations, what happiness we are capable of, and what are the means of attaining it."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"And what is this general object? The happiness of the human race. But where are the proper persons, the good, the generous and the accomplished to be found? And how, and by what strong motives, are they to be induced to be engaged, in a task so vast, so incessant, so difficult and so laborious? This association must be gradual. There are some such persons to be found in every society. Such noble minds will be engaged by the heart warming object. The first task of the association must therefore be to form the young members. As these multiply and advance, they become the apostles of beneficence, and the work is now on foot, and advances witha speed increasing every day. The slightest observation shows that nothing will so much contribute to increase the zeal of the members as secret union. We see with what keenness and zeal the frivolous business of Freemasons is conducted, by persons knit together by the secrecy of their union. Let this circumstance of our constitution therefore be directed to this noble purpose, and then all the objections urged against it by jealous tyranny and affrighted superstition will vanish. The order will thus work silently, and sucurely, and though the generous benefactors of the human race are thus deprived of the applause of the world, they have the noble pleasure of seeing their work prosper in their hands."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"Another poll revealed that 'faith in God is the most important part of American's lives'. Forty percent said they valued their relationship with God above all else; 29 percent chose 'good health' and 21 percent 'happy marriage'. ― 'Satisfying work' was chosen by 5 percent, 'respect of people in the community' by 2 percent. . . . That this world might offer basic features of a human existence is hardly to be contemplated. These are the kinds of results one might find in a shattered peasant society. Chiliastic visions are reported to be particularly present among blacks; again, not surprising, when we learn from the New England Journal of Medicine that 'black men in Harlem are less likely to reach the age of 65 than men in Bangladesh'."
― Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there"
― Attribution unknown
"Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned ― I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture or necrodestination."
― Frank Vincent Zappa (1940 to 1993), The Real Frank Zappa Book
"Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"As I argued in Beloved Son, a book about my son Brian and the subject of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless conversions ― to anything ― less likely. Brian now realizes this and has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy ― and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational ― the powers of reason are surprisingly ineffective in changing the believer's mind."
― Steve Allen, comedian, from an essay in the book The Courage of Conviction, edited by Philip Berman
"As the human soul matures, it outgrows it's romantic, privatized, and obsessive love of the particular other and expands its conception of the beauty which is worthy of love to include the beauty of the soul, and the beauty as it exists in activities and institutions, and in the sciences, until finally with gaze fixed on the vast ocean of beauty, it will bring forth in the abundance of its love of wisdom many beautiful and magnificent sentiments and ideas, and finally catch sight of the eternal beauties."
― Diotima of Mantinea according to Σωκράτης, Socrates, via Plato
"As the speed of information increases, the tendency is for politics to move away from representation and delegation of constituents toward immediate involvement of the entire community in the central acts of decision. Slower speeds of information make delegation and representation mandatory . . . When the electric speed is introduced into such a delegated and representational organization, this obsolescent organization can only be made to function by a series of subterfuges and makeshifts. These strike some observers as base betrayals of the original aims and purposes of the established forms."
― Marshall McLuhan, 'Understanding Media, 1964
"As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
― 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi [Confucius] (circa 551bce to 479bce)
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
― 老子, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tzu (possibly somewhere in the period: 1100 to 400bce) as translated by Stephen Mitchell (1992)
"Between being praised and persecuted, condoned and condemned, I might understandably have become bewildered, particularly at the brand of ethics sometimes displayed by the staunch defenders of Christianity. But of one thing I am sure: I am sure that I fought not only for what I earnestly believed to be right, but for the truest kind of religious freedom intended by the First Amendment, the complete separation of church and state."
― Vashti Cromwell McCollum, One Woman's Fight
"But in the end one also has to understand that the needs that religion has satisfied and philosophy is now supposed to satisfy are not immutable; they can be weakened and exterminated. Consider, for example, that Christian distress of mind that comes from sighing over ones inner depravity and care for ones salvation -- all concepts originating in nothing but errors of reason and deserving, not satisfaction, but obliteration."
― Freidrich Nietzsche, from Human, all too Human, s.27, R.J. Hollingdale translation
"By what right, moreover, could a Christian or a Marxist accuse me, for example, of pessimism? I was not the one to invent the misery of the human being or the terrifying formulas of divine malediction."
― Albert Camus (1930 to 1960)
"Canada: a few acres of snow."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so."
― Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers."
― Σωκράτης, Socrates, (circa 470bce to 399bce)
"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks the whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns somersaults when there is no whip."
― George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair (1903 to 1950)
"Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding anyone."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"Common sense is not so common."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"Conclusions which are merely verbal cannot bear fruit, only those do which are based on demonstrated fact. "
― Ἱπποκράτης, Hippokrates of Kos (circa 460bce to 377bce)
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds . . ."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails dangers that must not be underestimated. Practitioners must take into account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being. The history of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a pleasure drug. Special internal and external advance preparations are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful experience."
― Dr. Albert Hofmann (1906 to 2008), the discoverer of LSD
"Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"Disciples do own onto masters only a temporary belief and a suspension of their own judgement until they be fully instructed, and not an absolute resignation or perpetual captivity."
― Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Alban, King's Counsel (1561 to 1626)
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."
― William Butler Yeats (1865 to 1935)
"Doing is a quantum leap from imagining. Thinking about swimming isn't much like actually getting in the water. Actually getting in the water can take your breath away. The defense force inside of us wants us to be cautious, to stay away from anything as intense as a new kind of action. Its job is to protect us, and it categorically avoids anything resembling danger. But it's often wrong. Anything worth doing is worth doing too soon."
― Barbara Sher (1865 to 1935)
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"Doubt as sin. ― Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature- is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned."
― Nietzsche
"Ein Buch ist Spiegel, aus dem kein Apostel herausgucken kann, wenn ein Affe hineinguckt."
"A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already."
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 to 1799) Aphorisms (1775 to 1779),
translation by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield
"Equality, because without it there can be no liberty."
― Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 to 1778)
"Eros is a seeker after wisdom, and being a philosopher, is midway between wise and ignorant."
― Diotima of Mantinea according to Σωκράτης, Socrates, via Plato
"Eternity is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority."
― Thomas Henry Huxley, (1825 to 1895)
"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."
― Σωκράτης, Socrates, (circa 470bce to 399bce)
"Everything flows, nothing stands still."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil."
― Amos Elon (1926-2009)
"Exactness is the Sublimity of fools." "L'exactitude est le sublime des sots."
― William Cowper (also attributed to Fontenelle who disclaimed it.)
"Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases."
― Ἱπποκράτης, Hippokrates of Kos (circa 460bce to 377bce)
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"Faith means not *wanting* to know the truth."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue."
― 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi [Confucius] (circa 551bce to 479bce)
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
― Alexander Pope (1688 to 1744)
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"G is Grace, the Flaming Star is the Torch of Reason. Those who possess this knowledge are indeed Illuminati."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and I can singlehandedly move the world."
― Ἀρχιμήδης, Archimedes of Syracuse (circa 287bce to 212bce)
"Go some distance away because the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony of proportion is rapidly seen."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"God did not reward men for being honest, generous and brave, but for the act of faith. Without faith, all the so-called virtues were sins. And the men who practiced these virtues, without faith, deserved to suffer eternal pain. All of these comforting and reasonable things were taught by the ministers in their pulpits ― by teachers in Sunday schools and by parents at home. The children were victims. They were assaulted in the cradle ― in their mother's arms. Then, the schoolmaster carried on the war against their natural sense, and all the books they read were filled with the same impossible truths. The poor children were helpless. The atmosphere they breathed was filled with lies ― lies that mingled with their blood."
― Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 to 1899)
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"God is the only being who doesn't need to exist to rule."
― Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821 to 1867)
"Gods don't kill people. . . . People with Gods kill people."
― David Viaene
"Have you ever wondered why God waited thousands of years, from Adam to Jesus, to tell the world he had a son? He, who begins by loving Christianity more than truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all."
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet, critic, journalist, philosopher
"He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty"
― Diotima of Mantinea according to Σωκράτης, Socrates, via Plato
"History is fables agreed upon."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day."
― Stephen Jay Gould, Our Allotted Lifetimes, The Panda's Thumb, 1980
"I admit cheerfully that I am such an advanced case of Aggravated Agnosticism that whenever I do move something into 0 or 10, I get nervous, wonder if I am becoming as simple-minded as the Pope or Dr. Carl Sagan and start looking for evidence to move that meme toward 1 or 9."
― Robert Anton Wilson (1932 to 2007), in the Introduction to his play Wilhelm Reich in Hell
"I am proud to be known to the world as the founder of the Illuminati."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjunction with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder child."
― Dr. Albert Hofmann (1906 to 2008), the discoverer of LSD
"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, ― I call it the one mortal blemish of mankind."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"I did not bring Deism into Bavaria."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"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 (1820 to 1906)
"I do not care to be admired causelessly, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively -- or blindly. I do not care for blindness in any form, I have too much to show -- or for deafness, I have too much to say. I do not care to be admired by anyone's *heart* -- only by someone's *head*."
― Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (1905 to 1982)
"I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language. "
― Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 to 1973) in Paris Review, Writers at Work interviews, 4th series
"I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches."
― Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884 to 1980)
"I have been informed repeatedly, by persons who considered themselves hard-headed realists, that men in business normally desire to grow rich. Observation has convinced me that the persons who gave me this assurance, so far from being realists, were sentimental idealists, totally blind to the most patent facts of the world in which they live. If business men really wished to grow rich more ardently than they wish to keep others poor, the world would quickly become a paradise."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"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 Alva Edison (1847 to 1931)
"I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing ― a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process ― an integral function of the universe."
― Buckminster Fuller (1895 to 1983) in I Seem to Be a Verb (1970) (1970)
"I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be."
― Dr. Albert Hofmann (1906 to 2008)
"I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new Consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation."
― Dr. Albert Hofmann (1906 to 2008)
"Ich sage euch: man muß noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können.", usually translated as: "I tell you: one must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)
"I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape."
― Desmond Morris
"I was told that the Chinese said that they would bury me by the Western lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist."
― Bertrand Russell, Autobiography
"I Was a Freethinker Before I Knew How to Think."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom."
― Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (1908 to 1986)
"I would like to believe that people have an instinct for freedom, that they really want to control their own affairs. They don't want to be pushed around, ordered, oppressed, etc., and they want a chance to do things that make sense, like constructive work in a way they control, or maybe control together with others. I don't know any way to prove this. It's really a hope about what human beings are like, a hope that if social structures change sufficiently, those aspects of human nature will be realized."
― Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
"If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?"
― Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 to 1895)
"If all the Christians who have called other Christians “not really a Christian” were to vanish, there'd be no Christians left."
― Attribution Unknown
"If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to, Then He is not omnipotent. If He is able, but not willing, Then He is malevolent. If He is both able and willing, Then whence cometh evil? If He is neither able nor willing, Then why call Him God?"
― Ἐπίκουρος, Epikouros (circa 341bce to 270bce)
"If I believed in a god, which I do not, I would like to communicate with him on the same intellectual level. Therefore, I would have to teach him a few things."
― Aaron Erwin
"If in a Garden the gardener dies, The Garden is his tomb: Where deadly Nature builds over him, Infinite Bloom."
― S D Rodrian, physicist poet
"If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"If the greatest mania of all is passion: and if I am a natural slave to passion: and if the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase ― Well, that explains a lot of things, doesn't it? We need look no further. Yes sir, and people wonder why I seem to look at them strangely. Or why my personal etiquette often seems makeshift and contradictory, even clinically insane... Hell, I don't miss those whispers, those soft groans of fear when I enter a civilized room. I know what they're thinking, and I know exactly why. They are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that I am a teenage girl trapped in the body of a 60-year-old career criminal who has already died 16 times."
― Hunter Stockton Thompson (1937 to 2005) in Doomed Love at the Taco Stand for Time June 24, 2001
"If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction."
― Judith Hayes
"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities..."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
― Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
"If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men."
― Baron d'Holbach
"If you do not know and do not question, can you be called a noble man?"
― 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi [Confucius] (circa 551bce to 479bce)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."
― Harlan Ellison
"If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mother, your dad, your priest, to some guy on television, to any of the people telling you how to do your shit, then you *deserve* it. If you want to be a schmuck, be a schmuck ― but don't wait around for respect from other people ― a schmuck is a schmuck."
― Frank Vincent Zappa (1940 to 1993), The Real Frank Zappa Book
"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, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"In another situation, and in an active station in life, I should have been keenly occupied, and the founding of an order would have never come into my head."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"In Heaven all the interesting people are missing."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"In keeping with my non-Aristotelian or relativist-Existentialist bias, I do not classify ideas as simply "true" or "false". I prefer to assign them probabilities, on a scale from 0 (the Aristotelian "false") to 10 (the Aristotelian "true"). A rating of 5 means that I am still sitting geometrically on the middle of the fence, above 5 means that I presently lean somewhat toward belief and below 5 means that today I lean somewhat toward finding no value in this gloss at all (for me)."
― Robert Anton Wilson (1932 to 2007) in the Introduction to Wilhelm Reich in Hell
"In seeking a goal a woman acquires that magnificent possession ― the absolute"
― Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (1908 to 1986)
"In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"In the future, etiquette will become more and more important. That doesn't mean knowing which fork to pick up ― I mean basic consideration for the rights of other animals (human beings included) and the willingness, whenever practical, to tolerate the other guy's idiosyncracies."
― Frank Vincent Zappa (1940 to 1993), The Real Frank Zappa Book
"In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared."
― Louis Pasteur (1822 to 1895)
"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?"
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder'."
― Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894 to 1963)
"It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good."
― Marcus Tullius Cicero (circa 106bce to 43bce)
"It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself completely. . . .Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son, man."
― Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished ― unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"It is harder to fight pleasure than to fight emotion."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"It is not enough for theory to describe and analyze, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality."
― Jean Baudrillard (1929 to 2007)
"It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"It is precisely because it is fashionable for Americans to know no science, even though they may be well educated otherwise, that they so easily fall prey to nonsense. They thus become part of the armies of the night, the purveyors of nitwittery, the retailers of intellectual junk food, the feeders on mental cardboard, for their ignorance keeps them from distinguishing nectar from sewage."
― Isaac Asimov, Исаак Юдович Озимов, (1920 to 1992) The Armies of the Night
"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 the people."
― Giordano Bruno
"It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
― Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs, Aristotle (circa 384bce to 322bce)
"It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can."
― Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 to 1778)
"It was the full conviction of this, and of what could be done, if every man were placed in the office for which he was fitted by nature and a proper education, which first suggested to me the plan of Illumination."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible."
― George William Foote (1850 to 1915)
"Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny."
― Frank Vincent Zappa (1940 to 1993)
"Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children."
― جبران خليل جبران بن ميکائيل بن سعد (Khalil Gibran, Gibran Khalil Gibran bin Mikā'īl bin Sa'ad) (1883 to 1931)
"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power."
― 老子, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tzu (possibly somewhere in the period: 1100 to 400bce) as translated by Stephen Mitchell (1992)
"Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Follow it up, explore all around it, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought."
― Alexander Graham Bell (1847 to 1922)
"Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"Let us therefore reject all superstition in order to become more human; but in speaking against fanaticism, let us not imitate the fanatics: they are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors. Let us assuage their ills, and never embitter them, and let us pour drop by drop into their souls the divine balm of toleration, which they would reject with horror if it were offered to them all at once."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Life is short, [the] art long, opportunity fleeting, experience misleading, judgment difficult."
― Ἱπποκράτης, Hippokrates of Kos (circa 460bce to 377bce)
"Love: ― a grave mental disease."
― Πλάτων, Plátōn, Plato (circa ~428bce to 347bce)
"Love is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither wise nor foolish, neither god nor mortal."
― Diotima of Mantinea according to Σωκράτης, Socrates, via Plato
"Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses."
― 老子, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tzu (possibly somewhere in the period: 1100 to 400bce)
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"Madness is a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention."
― Πλάτων, Plátōn, Plato (circa ~428bce to 347bce)
"Man is a piece of the universe made alive."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"Man is going to be displaced altogether as a specialist by the computer. Man himself is being forced to reestablish, employ, and enjoy his innate "comprehensivity." Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and universe is ahead for all of us."
― Buckminster Fuller (1895 to 1983)
"Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft . . . and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor."
― Wernher von Braun
"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been."
― Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true."
― Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Alban, King's Counsel (1561 to 1626)
"Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles."
― Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 to 1778)
"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal."
― Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. These rules are sufficient to enable you to know the true from the false ― and this aids men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation ― and not to wrap yourself in ignorance, a thing which can have no good result, so that in despair you would give yourself up to melancholy."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"Mark the manner of a person's method of acquiring. Comprehend their motives. Examine the way they take recreation. How can a person conceal their character?"
― 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi [Confucius] (circa 551bce to 479bce)
"Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"May you live all the days of your life."
― Jonathan Swift (1667 to 1745)
"May you live in interesting times"
― Attributed as an ancient Chinese curse
"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"Men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it passes; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes things long past to seem present."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and imbibed opinions, but generally act according to custom."
― Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Alban, King's Counsel (1561 to 1626)
"Men have become tools of their tools."
― Henry David Thoreau (1817 to 1862)
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
― Blaise Pascal (1623 to 1662)
"Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. . . . It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit . . ."
― Hippocrates (circa 460bce 377bce), The Sacred Disease
"Men would be angels, angels would be gods."
― Alexander Pope (1688 to 1744)
"Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give."
― Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 to 1899)
"Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"Morality will perform all this; and Morality is the fruit of Illumination."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"More generally, people have little specific knowledge of what is happening around them. An academic study that appeared right before the presidential election reports that less than 30 percent of the population was aware of the positions of the candidates on major issues, though 86 percent knew the name of George Bush's dog. The general thrust of propaganda gets through, however. When asked to identify the largest element of the federal budget, less than 1/4 give the correct answer: military spending. Almost half select foreign aid, which barely exists; the second choice is welfare, chosen by 1/3 of the population, who also far overestimate the proportion that goes to Blacks and to child support. And though the question was not asked, virtually none are likely to be aware that 'defense spending' is in large measure welfare for the rich. Another result of the study is that more educated sectors are more ignorant--not surprising, since they are the main targets of indoctrination. Bush supporters, who are the best educated, scored lowest overall."
― Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
"Most confusing of all, though, was probably Marco Polo's claim that public safety and commercial honesty were far better maintained in China than in Europe, without Christianity as a basis for morals."
― K. Pomerantz and S. Topik, in The World that Trade Created
"Most men make little other use of their Speech than to give evidence against their own Understanding."
― George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633 to 1695)
"Most religions prophecy the end of the world and then consistently work together to ensure that these prophecies come true."
― Attribution Unknown
"My general plan is good, though in the detail there may be faults."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
Napoleon: "What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he says is wrong." Guiseppe: "Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right."
― The Man of Destiny George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Naturalment! "Consistency is the hobgoblin of people caught in the cliché dimension."
― S D Rodrian
"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light."
― Alexander Pope (1688 to 1744)
"Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment."
― Buckminster Fuller (1895 to 1983)
"Nature is wont to hide herself."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
― Margaret Mead (1901 to 1978)
"No man ever believes that the [Ed note: presumably the Pauline Abramic] Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"No sense in no sense innocence of what of not and what of delight. In no sense innocence in no sense and what in delight and not, in no sense innocence in no sense no sense what, in no sense and delight, and in no sense and delight and not in no sense and delight and not, no sense in no sense innocence and delight."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"Nothing hath an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not of our side."
― George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633 to 1695)
"Nothing is a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on the children, than the unlived lives of their parents."
― Carl Gustav Jung (1875 to 1961)
"Nothing would be more profitable to us than a right history of mankind."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"Of all the means I know to lead men, the most effectual is a concealed mystery."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?"
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"Old people love to give good advice to console themselves for no longer being able to set a bad example."
― François Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613 to 1680)
"Oligarchy: a government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it."
― Πλάτων, Plátōn, Plato (circa ~428bce to 347bce)
"Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956), writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters of
Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes so-called "Monkey Trial" in 1925
"Once purged of the insane, plagiarisms, illegalities, contradictions, and the perverse, the Bible could be printed on match book covers while increasing its usefulness."
― Attribution Unknown
"One can only blaspheme if one believes."
― Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 to 1973) in Concerning the Unpredictable
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"One of humanity's prime drives is to understand and be understood. All other living creatures are designed for highly specialized tasks. Man seems unique as the comprehensive comprehender and co-ordinator of local universe affairs."
― Buckminster Fuller (1895 to 1983)
"One of the hardest parts of critical thinking is the ability to detect in yourself elements of irrationality, prejudice, fear, peer pressure and social conditioning -- and to confront them."
― Jeff Halper (born 1946)
"One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. The P.S.U.C. militiamen whom I knew in the line, the Communists from the International Brigade whom I met from time to time, never called me a Trotskyist or a traitor; they left that kind of thing to the journalists in the rear. The people who wrote pamphlets against us and vilified us in the newspapers all remained safe at home, or at worst in the newspaper offices of Valencia, hundreds of miles from the bullets and the mud. And apart from the libels of the inter-party feud, all the usual war-stuff, the tub-thumping, the heroics, the vilification of the enemy — all these were done, as usual, by people who were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight. [ . . . ] Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him."
― George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair (1903 to 1950) Homage to Catalonia
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
― Πλάτων, Plátōn, Plato (circa ~428bce to 347bce)
"One should not go into church if one wants to breathe pure air."
― Friedrich Nietzsche
"One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little."
― Alexander Chase
"Only one good: Knowledge. One evil: Ignorance."
― Σωκράτης, Socrates, (circa 470bce to 399bce)
"Only out of the absolute depravity that was first century Rome, could something like christianity have ever risen to power as a world religion."
― Attribution unknown
"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat."
― Sir Julian Huxley (1887 to 1975)
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
― Thomas Alva Edison (1847 to 1931)
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates."
― Thomas Szasz
"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned."
― sometimes cited as Anemones, or Attribution Unknown as quoted by Daniel C. Dennett in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006)
"Philosophy is the highest music."
― Πλάτων, Plátōn, Plato (circa ~428bce to 347bce)
"Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence, of man, and of man's relationship to existence. In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible."
― Ayn Rand, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (1905 to 1982)
"Pigeons on the grass alas. Pigeons on the grass alas. Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass Pigeons large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass . . ."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"Plato was a bore."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Power worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem invincible."
― George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair (1903 to 1950)
"Prejudice is the reason of fools."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction."
― Buckminster Fuller (1895 to 1983)
"Religion does three things quite effectively: Divides people, Controls people, Deludes people"
― Carlespie Mary Alice McKinney
"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... A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."
― Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) Future of an Illusion
"Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide."
― Tom Robbins (born 1936)
"Religion once ruled the World. . . . It was known as the Dark Ages."
― Ruth Hurmence Green (1915 to 1981)
"Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher."
― 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi [Confucius] (circa 551bce to 479bce)
"Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946) in the poem Sacred Emily
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent."
― George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair (1903 to 1950)
"Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed."
― Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 to 1895)
"Security, the chief pretense of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone's head."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Shadow partakes of the nature of universal matter. All such matters are more powerful in their beginning and grow weaker towards the end, I say at the beginning, whatever their form or condition may be and whether visible or invisible. And it is not from small beginnings that they grow to a great size in time; as it might be a great oak which has a feeble beginning from a small acorn. Yet I may say that the oak is most powerful at its beginning, that is where it springs from the earth, which is where it is largest"
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake . . . Religion is all bunk."
― Thomas Alva Edison (1847 to 1931)
"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Some would sooner die than think. In fact, they often do."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commisars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can't tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion."
― Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
"Talking about music is like fishing about architecture."
― Frank Vincent Zappa (1940 to 1993)
"Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"That which does not destroy me, makes me stronger."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"The art of government is the organization of idolatry."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience, makes it possible with their help, and after suitable internal and external preparation . . . to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak . . . I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character of LSD as a sacred drug."
― Dr. Albert Hofmann (1906 to 2008), the discoverer of LSD
"The Christian concept of God is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived on earth; perhaps it even represents the low-water mark in the descending development of the God type. God degenerated to the *contradiction of life*, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! In God a declaration of hostility towards life, nature, and the will to life! [The Abramic] God is the formula for every calumny of 'this world', for every lie about the 'next world!' In God nothingness defied, the will to nothingness sanctified."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Antichrist
"The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"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"
― Ferdinand Magellan, Fernão de Magalhães, (1480 to 1521)
"The Common Sense, is that which judges of things offered to it by the other senses. The ancient speculators have concluded that that part of man which constitutes his judgment is caused by a central organ to which the other five senses refer everything by means of impressibility; and to this centre they have given the name Common Sense. And they say that this Sense is situated in the centre of the head between Sensation and Memory. And this name of Common Sense is given to it solely because it is the common judge of all the other five senses i.e. Seeing, Hearing, Touch, Taste and Smell. This Common Sense is acted upon by means of Sensation which is placed as a medium between it and the senses. Sensation is acted upon by means of the images of things presented to it by the external instruments, that is to say the senses which are the medium between external things and Sensation. In the same way the senses are acted upon by objects. Surrounding things transmit their images to the senses and the senses transfer them to the Sensation. Sensation sends them to the Common Sense, and by it they are stamped upon the memory and are there more or less retained according to the importance or force of the impression."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."
― Carl Gustav Jung (1875 to 1961)
"The creative mind plays with the object it loves."
― Carl Gustav Jung (1875 to 1961)
"The creative person cannot simply be driven, he must be drawn to his work by visions, hopes, joy of discovery, love of truth, and sensuous pleasure in the creative activity itself."
― Howard Gruber
"The crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves."
― Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 to 1899)
"The Dao is like a bellows: it is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces; the more you talk of it, the less you understand."
― 老子, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tzu (possibly somewhere in the period: 1100 to 400bce)
"The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnameable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding."
― 老子, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tzu (possibly somewhere in the period: 1100 to 400bce) as translated by Stephen Mitchell (1992)
"The earth is not in the centre of the Sun's orbit nor at the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements, and united with them. And any one standing on the moon, when it and the sun are both beneath us, would see this our earth and the element of water upon it just as we see the moon, and the earth would light it as it lights us."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"The educated man tries to repress the inferior one in himself, without realizing that by this he forces the latter to become revolutionary."
― Carl Gustav Jung (1875 to 1961)
"The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things."
― Ἐπίκτητος (Epictetos) (circa 55ce to 135ce)
"The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way. Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality, and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation, and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing beyond the grave. Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents . . . ."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic 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 to 1950)
"The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, "What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?" and my answer must at once be, "It is no use." There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for."
― George Leigh Mallory, 1922
"The first task of the association must therefore be to form the young members."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"The great tragedy of science ― the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
― Thomas Henry Huxley, (1825-1895): physiologist, anatomist, anthropologist, agnostic, educator
"The hankering of the mind is irresistible."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"The head of every family will be what Abraham was, the patriarch, the priest and the unlettered lord of his family, and Reason will be the code of laws to all mankind. The human race will then become one family, and the world will be the dwelling of Rational Men."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it."
― Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 to 1899)
"The justice yet the uselessness of my complaints left in my mind the seeds of indignation against our foolish civil institutions, whereby the real welfare of the public and true justice are always sacrificed to an apparent order, which is in reality subversive of all order, and of which the only effect is to bestow the sanction of public authority upon the oppression of the weak and the injustice of the strong."
― Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 to 1778), The Confessions
"The man of wisdom is never of two minds; the man of benevolence never worries; the man of courage is never afraid."
― 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi [Confucius] (circa 551bce to 479bce)
"The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives."
― Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, महात्मा [Sanskrit honourific pronounced mahātmā ] Gandhi (1869 to 1948)
"The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
― George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair (1903 to 1950) Notes on Nationalism
"The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes ― that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects ― this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once ― and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity . . . ."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956), 1930
"The only abnormality is the incapacity to Love."
― Anaïs Nin, Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell (1903 to 1977)
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
― Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894 to 1963)
"The only thing for which we can combine is the underlying ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. But it is hardly strong enough to call this ideal "underlying." ― It is almost completely forgotten. It has been buried beneath layer after layer of doctrinaire priggishness, party squabbles and half-backed "progressivism" until it is like a diamond hidden under a monition of dung. The job of the Socialist is to get it out again. Justice and liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world."
― George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair (1903 to 1950)
"The opposite of nature is impossible"
― Buckminster Fuller (1895 to 1983)
"The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future ― must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm."
― Ἱπποκράτης, Hippokrates of Kos (circa 460bce to 377bce)
"The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind."
― Edgar Allan Poe (1809 to 1849)
"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970) in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
"The practical success of an idea, irrespective of its inherent merit, is dependent on the attitude of the contemporaries. If timely it is quickly adopted; if not, it is apt to fare like a sprout lured out of the ground by warm sunshine, only to be injured and retarded in its growth by the succeeding frost."
― Nikola Tesla (1856 to 1943)
"The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant [is] alone enough to upset Darwin."
― Henry Adams, Education, 1907
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
"The stacking together of the paintings of the great masters in museums is a catastrophe, and a collection of a hundred good intellects produces collectively one idiot."
― Carl Gustav Jung (1875 to 1961)
"The superfluous is very necessary."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"The thing that is most interesting about government servants is that they believe what they are supposed to believe, they really do believe what they are supposed to believe."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent: ― slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"The truth of the matter is this: No god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for they are wise already; nor does any one who is already wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that one who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with themself: having no desire for that of which they feel no want."
― Diotima of Mantinea according to Σωκράτης, Socrates, via Plato
"The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced."
― Frank Vincent Zappa (1940 to 1993)
"The universe is deathless; Is deathless because, having no finite self, it stays infinite. A sound man by not advancing himself stays the further ahead of himself, By not confining himself to himself sustains himself outside himself: By never being an end in himself he endlessly becomes himself."
― 老子, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tzu (possibly somewhere in the period: 1100 to 400bce)
"The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just... I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don't understand."
― Gertrude Stein (1874 to 1946)
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That is the essence of inhumanity."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"There are some who employ words only to disguise their meanings
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly probable."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956), 1930
"There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things."
― Giordano Bruno, Filippo Bruno (1548 to 1600)
"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."
― Buckminster Fuller (1895 to 1983)
"There is only one road to progress, in education as in other human affairs, and that is: Science wielded by love. Without science, love is powerless; without love, science is destructive."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"There is substantial evidence that the fear of domestic disruption has inhibited murderous plans. One documented case concerns Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recognized the need that 'sufficient forces would still be available for civil disorder control.' if they sent troops to Vietnam after the Tet Offensive, and Pentagon officials feared that escalation might lead to massive civil disobedience, in view of the large-scale popular opposition to the war, running the risk of 'provoking a domestic crisis of unprecented proportions.' A review of the internal documents released in the Pentagon Papers shows that considerations of cost were the sole factor inhibiting planners, a fact that should be noted by citizens concerned to restrain the violence of the state. In such cases as these, and many others, popular demonstrations and civil disobedience may, under appropriate circumstances, encourage others to undertake a broader range of conventional action by extending the range of the thinkable, and where there is real popular understanding of the legitimacy of direct action to confront institutional violence, may serve as a catalyst to constructive organization and action that will pave the way to more fundamental change."
― Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
"There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages."
― Richard Lederer Anguished English
"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 for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt.''
― Atlas Shrugged
"They came with a Bible and their religion- stole our land, crushed our spirit... and now tell us we should be thankful to the 'Lord' for being saved"
― Chief Pontiac (Ottawa Indian)
"They obtained followers, not from their authenticity, but from their conductiveness, to the end which they proposed, and from the importance of that end. It is by this scale that we must measure the mad and wicked explanations of the Rosycrucions, the exorcists and Cabalists. These are rejected by all good Masons, because incompatible with social happiness. Only such systems as promote this are retained. But alas, they are all sadly deficient, because they leave us under the domination of political and religious prejudices; and they are as inefficient as the sleepy dose of an ordinary sermon."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"Think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
― Henri Bergson
"Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends."
― William Butler Yeats (1865 to 1935), The Municipal Gallery Re-Visited
"Thirty spokes unite at the single hub; It is the empty space which makes the wheel useful. Mold clay to form a bowl; It is the empty space which makes the bowl useful. Cut out windows and doors; It is the empty space which makes the room useful."
― 老子, Lǎozǐ, Lao Tzu (possibly somewhere in the period: 1100 to 400bce)
"This is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate."
― from Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut
"This is the great object held out by this association; and the means of attaining it is illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason which will dispell the clouds of superstition and of prejudice."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"This is the right way of approching or being initiated into the mysteries of love: to begin with loving the examples of beauty in this world, and to grow from that into the love of absolute beauty, from one instance of physical beauty that one is able to perceive, to two, and from two to all, expanding from physical beauty, to physical and moral beauty, and from there to the beauty of bodies, ideas and minds, and from the love of the beauty of knowledge of various kinds to the love of the ultimate knowledge illuminating absolute and eternal beauty"
― Diotima of Mantinea according to Σωκράτης, Socrates, via Plato
"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privelege to do for it whatever I can. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and being extinguished by regular measures."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities"
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk."
― Bertolt Brecht
"Those who try to resist the technologically advanced but morally primitive Western societies will pay a bitter price."
― Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
"Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can't, Teach."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Time is a game played beautifully by children."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"To be an atheist requires strength of mind and goodness of heart found in not one of a thousand."
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love."
― George Santayana
"To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice."
― 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi [Confucius] (circa 551bce to 479bce)
"To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous."
― 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi [Confucius] (circa 551bce to 479bce)
"To think about events realistically, in terms of multiple causations, is hard and emotionally unrewarding. How much easier, how much more agreeable to trace each effect to a single and, if possible, a personal cause! To the illusion of understanding will be joined, in this case, the pleasure of hero worship, if the circumstances are favorable, and the equal, or even greater pleasure, if they are unfavorable, of persecuting a scapegoat."
― Aldous Huxley, in The Devils of Loudun, 1952
"Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabeled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog."
― T.H. Huxley
"Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie . . . It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one's senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist."
― George Orwell, Eric Arthur Blair (1903 to 1950)
"Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"Truth will sooner come out of error than from confusion."
― Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Alban, King's Counsel (1561 to 1626)
"Two great European narcotics, alcohol and christianity."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"Unconditional love is a characteristic of the Christian faith, such as that demonstrated by God in the form of a place of eternal torture for the unsaved."
― Attribution Unknown
"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"Very Few People Can Afford to Be Poor."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."
― Jonathan Swift (1667 to 1745)
"We are a nation of laws, poorly written and randomly enforced."
― Frank Vincent Zappa (1940 to 1993)
"We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience."
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"We must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent observations and inferences by the thousands. The earth is billions of years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary descent. Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither flat nor at the center of the universe? Science *has* taught us some things with confidence! Evolution on an ancient earth is as well established as our planet's shape and position. Our continuing struggle to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not cast our documentation of its occurrence ― the "fact of evolution" ― into doubt."
― Stephen Jay Gould, The Verdict on Creationism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol XII No. 2
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"We read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use. The guessing and ascribing of fanciful, mostly primitive-assumed structure of the world is precisely what 'philosophy' and 'metaphysics' do. The empirical search for a world-structure and the building of new languages (theories) ... of similar structure ... is precisely what science does.... It develops in the natural order, while metaphysics of every description uses the reversed, and ultimately a pathological order."
― Alfred Korzybski
"What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"What is now proved was once only imagined."
― William Blake (1757 to 1827)
"What is the first business of one who practices philosophy To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows."
― Ἐπίκτητος (Epictetos) (circa 55ce to 135ce)
"What is tolerance? ― it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly ― that is the first law of nature."
― Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694 to 1778)
"What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"When a tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."
― Πλάτων, Plátōn, Plato (circa ~428bce to 347bce)
"When Alexander The Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: "Only stand out of my light." Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."
― John Gardner
"When asked, "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?" Mencken replied, "Why do men go to zoos?"
"When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong ― or absolutely right."
― Albert Guinon, French playwright
"When man lives under government, he is fallen, his worth is gone, and his nature tarnished."
― Adam Weishaupt (1748 to 1830)
"When one studies the biographies of the founders and leaders of the various religions, one cannot help but be struck by the psychotic ― or at least extremely abnormal ― behavior that has characterized so many of them. Luther, Wesley, and Loyola had hallucinations ("visions"). St. Theresa almost certainly was a hysteric. The book The Psychotic Personality, by Leon J. Saul and Silas L. Warner, devotes considerable space to the psychotic personalities of Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science), Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Mohammed, and the Rev. Jim Jones . . . It seems significant that the founder of Christianity itself, St. Paul, also suffered from epilepsy."
― Frank Zindler, Religiosity as a Mental Disorder, American Atheist magazine, April 1988, p. 27
"When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding--to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard."
― Adrienne Cecile Rich
"When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible."
― Jomo Kenyatta
"When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel."
― Henry Louis Mencken (1880 to 1956)
"Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!"
― George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
"Why should workers agree to be slaves in a basically authoritarian structure? They should have control over it themselves. Why shouldn't communities have a dominant voice in running the institutions that affect their lives?"
― Avram Noam Chomsky (born 1928)
"Will itself cannot be willed . . . Willing is a kind of desiring and striving. The Greeks call it ὄρεξις (orexis)."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche as quoted in Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche [Volume 1 & 2, Harper San Francisco, 1991]
"Wisdom is the daughter of experience."
― Leonardo da Vinci (1452 to 1519)
"Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge."
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."
― Πλάτων, Plátōn, Plato (circa ~428bce to 347bce)
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
― Steven Weinberg
"Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid, the second is pleasant and highly paid."
― Bertrand Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (1872 to 1970)
"Would it not be simpler If the Government Dissolved the people And elected another?"
― Bertolt Brecht
"You cannot kill time without injuring eternity."
― Henry David Thoreau (1817 to 1862)
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you."
― Ηράκλειτος, Herakleitos of Ephesus (circa 535bce to 475bce)
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
― Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, महात्मा [Sanskrit honourific pronounced mahātmā ] Gandhi (1869 to 1948)
"Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them ― the one, in fact, which is not a mask."
― Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 to 1973) in One of the Family