Quotes I like
"I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book." - John Lennon
"Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out. You're curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go." - xkcd.
"Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely, in broad daylight, openly wearing symbols of their religion, perhaps around their necks. And maybe - dare I dream it - maybe one day there could even be an openly Christian president. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively." - John Stewart
"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection" - Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr.
"At around 11pm, the party was in full swing. People started talking to strangers, non-smokers began smoking and lousy jokes were pronounced brilliant... the beer was working perfectly!" - Rob Cockerham, "How Much is Inside A Keg?"
"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can't possibly work." - slashdot sig
"Heaven has a stripper factory and a beer volcano." - Wikipedia article on the Flying Spaghetti Monster
"A cult is a religion with no political power" - Tom Wolfe
"Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else." - James M. Barrie
"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority." - Benjamin Franklin
"I am often made sick when a rich person in a rich nation attributes some minor blessing to God on account of his faith and prayers when the same God allows thousands of orphaned, exploited, abused, malnourished, homeless, innocent children to die in filthy gutters around the world every single day." - David Mann
"Dining with one's friends and beloved family is certainly one of life's primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal" - Julia Child
"Knowledge tells us that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom prevents us from putting it into fruit salad." -Miles Kington
"A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle."
"If conservatives were compassionate, they wouldn't have to put the adjective in front of it." - Wesley Clark
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." - Richard Dawkins
"You are mortal: it is the mortal way. You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live." - Dream, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Special #1.
Dissent is not unpatriotic. Saying dissent is unpatriotic is.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? - Epicurus (c. 341-271 BCE)
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger." - Herman Goering
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Teddy Roosevelt
"...once you're crazy and know nothing about numbers, the chances of finding something psychotic and hateful in a scrabble factory explosion are hovering just around 100%" - Penn Jillette, in an article about coincidental images in the Wingding font.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
"Ironic, isn't it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election. And yet, if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you." - Mr. Burns, The Simpsons
"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd." - Flannery O'Connor
"If anyone can hear me, hear this. My mind is my center and everything that happens there is my responsibility. Other people may believe what it please them to believe, but I will do nothing without I know the reason why and know it clearly. If you want something, then let me know, but do not you dare touch my mind." - Dirk Gently, DGHDA (Douglas Adams)
"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." - Mark Twain
"A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest man." - Willy Wonka
"He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.'" - Terry Pratchett
"The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'" - George Carlin
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." - Jack Handey
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be." - Douglas Adams
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." - Matt Groening
"Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding" - "Flagpole sitta" by Harvy Danger
"You should carry your intellect the way James Dean carried a cigarette." - Penn
"To you, I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the loyal opposition." - Sandy Bates
"Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope." - P.J. O'Rourke
"Eagles may soar but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."
"Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy -- in a jar on my desk." - Stephen King
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." - Nietzsche
"Always forgive your enemies--nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals, and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. It's not that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision." - Lynn Lavner
"It's an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations with all their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous." - Gloria Steinem
"We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition." - Alex Comfort
"The only difference between a religion and a cult is the number of members."
"Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing" - Spock, "The Cloud Minders", stardate 5818.4
"It's strange, isn't it. You stand in the middle of a library and go 'aaaaagghhhh' and everyone just stares at you. But you do the same thing on an airplane, and everyone joins in."
"Based on the ignorance and lack of understanding of their environment, it is safe to say that many people of ancient times created religion to explain their world and surroundings as best they could, mostly through use of supernatural phenomena which could be explained scientifically today. In other words, people created religion because they didn't know any better." - Chris Clark
millihelen, n.: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
Women are just like men, only different.
"I prayed to God for two weeks for a new bicycle, then I realized that God doesn't work that way. So I stole one and asked Him to forgive me."
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." - Seneca
"Don't make me come down there." - God
"The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again." - George Miller
"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering." - Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
Believe in things because they are likely true. There is really no other honest reason to believe.
"I imposed my religion on a thousand men. Shaped and twisted their ability to conceive and react. They became men of the church, but I would rather call them the sheep, and me the herder. Eventually, they would end up in slaughter. And all along, they had no idea." - Unknown
"Why do we, as a society, ridicule the children who use their brains and excel in school, and reward the ones who can run the fastest, or hit the hardest? Maybe it's because I was always picked last for kick ball, and the dodge ball always seemed to find my face...I dunno." -Wil Wheaton
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window." -Stephen King
"Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty good." - Woody Allen
"If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going?"
"What does God need with a starship?" - Kirk, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" - Voltaire
"If you need me, me and Neil'll be hanging out with the Dream King" - Tori Amos, "Tear in Your Hand"
"You only live once. But if you lived like me, once is enough." - Frank Sinatra
"There was nothing creative, charming, admirable or innovative in Pokémon except that it parted small children from their money with brutal efficiency. It inexplicably featured the dramatic story of cockfighting monsters who lived in your pants." John Tynes in Salon.com article re Wizards of the Coast
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." -Marcus Aurelius
What is incredible about the Bible is not its divine authorship; it's that such a concoction of contradictory nonsense could be believed by anyone to have been written by an omniscient god. To do so, one would first have to not read the book, which is the practice of most Christians; or, if one does read it, dump in the trash can one's rational intelligence -- to become a fool for god, in other words. - American Atheists website
"Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky... Who watches every thing you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of 10 specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you, and he needs money." - George Carlin
"Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth, and you should save it for someone you love." - Butch Hancock
Atheism is a religion like health is a disease.
"I think that naming your ignorance God and pretending that, having named it, you have converted ignorance to knowledge is a sorry approach to the unknown."
"If triangles made a god, they would give him three sides." - Baron de Montesquieu
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." - Unknown (not Julius Ceasar)
"I'm like a baby, she's like a cat. When we're happy we both get fat." - Barenaked Ladies, "Life in a Nutshell"
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." - George H. W. Bush
"The average person needs trepanation like he needs a hole in the head."
"Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out. You're curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go." - xkcd.
"Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely, in broad daylight, openly wearing symbols of their religion, perhaps around their necks. And maybe - dare I dream it - maybe one day there could even be an openly Christian president. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively." - John Stewart
"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection" - Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr.
"At around 11pm, the party was in full swing. People started talking to strangers, non-smokers began smoking and lousy jokes were pronounced brilliant... the beer was working perfectly!" - Rob Cockerham, "How Much is Inside A Keg?"
"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can't possibly work." - slashdot sig
"Heaven has a stripper factory and a beer volcano." - Wikipedia article on the Flying Spaghetti Monster
"A cult is a religion with no political power" - Tom Wolfe
"Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else." - James M. Barrie
"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority." - Benjamin Franklin
"I am often made sick when a rich person in a rich nation attributes some minor blessing to God on account of his faith and prayers when the same God allows thousands of orphaned, exploited, abused, malnourished, homeless, innocent children to die in filthy gutters around the world every single day." - David Mann
"Dining with one's friends and beloved family is certainly one of life's primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal" - Julia Child
"Knowledge tells us that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom prevents us from putting it into fruit salad." -Miles Kington
"A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle."
"If conservatives were compassionate, they wouldn't have to put the adjective in front of it." - Wesley Clark
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." - Richard Dawkins
"You are mortal: it is the mortal way. You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live." - Dream, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Special #1.
Dissent is not unpatriotic. Saying dissent is unpatriotic is.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? - Epicurus (c. 341-271 BCE)
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger." - Herman Goering
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Teddy Roosevelt
"...once you're crazy and know nothing about numbers, the chances of finding something psychotic and hateful in a scrabble factory explosion are hovering just around 100%" - Penn Jillette, in an article about coincidental images in the Wingding font.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
"Ironic, isn't it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election. And yet, if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you." - Mr. Burns, The Simpsons
"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd." - Flannery O'Connor
"If anyone can hear me, hear this. My mind is my center and everything that happens there is my responsibility. Other people may believe what it please them to believe, but I will do nothing without I know the reason why and know it clearly. If you want something, then let me know, but do not you dare touch my mind." - Dirk Gently, DGHDA (Douglas Adams)
"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." - Mark Twain
"A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest man." - Willy Wonka
"He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.'" - Terry Pratchett
"The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'" - George Carlin
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." - Jack Handey
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be." - Douglas Adams
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." - Matt Groening
"Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding" - "Flagpole sitta" by Harvy Danger
"You should carry your intellect the way James Dean carried a cigarette." - Penn
"To you, I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the loyal opposition." - Sandy Bates
"Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope." - P.J. O'Rourke
"Eagles may soar but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."
"Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy -- in a jar on my desk." - Stephen King
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." - Nietzsche
"Always forgive your enemies--nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals, and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. It's not that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision." - Lynn Lavner
"It's an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations with all their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous." - Gloria Steinem
"We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition." - Alex Comfort
"The only difference between a religion and a cult is the number of members."
"Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing" - Spock, "The Cloud Minders", stardate 5818.4
"It's strange, isn't it. You stand in the middle of a library and go 'aaaaagghhhh' and everyone just stares at you. But you do the same thing on an airplane, and everyone joins in."
"Based on the ignorance and lack of understanding of their environment, it is safe to say that many people of ancient times created religion to explain their world and surroundings as best they could, mostly through use of supernatural phenomena which could be explained scientifically today. In other words, people created religion because they didn't know any better." - Chris Clark
millihelen, n.: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
Women are just like men, only different.
"I prayed to God for two weeks for a new bicycle, then I realized that God doesn't work that way. So I stole one and asked Him to forgive me."
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." - Seneca
"Don't make me come down there." - God
"The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again." - George Miller
"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering." - Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
Believe in things because they are likely true. There is really no other honest reason to believe.
"I imposed my religion on a thousand men. Shaped and twisted their ability to conceive and react. They became men of the church, but I would rather call them the sheep, and me the herder. Eventually, they would end up in slaughter. And all along, they had no idea." - Unknown
"Why do we, as a society, ridicule the children who use their brains and excel in school, and reward the ones who can run the fastest, or hit the hardest? Maybe it's because I was always picked last for kick ball, and the dodge ball always seemed to find my face...I dunno." -Wil Wheaton
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window." -Stephen King
"Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty good." - Woody Allen
"If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going?"
"What does God need with a starship?" - Kirk, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" - Voltaire
"If you need me, me and Neil'll be hanging out with the Dream King" - Tori Amos, "Tear in Your Hand"
"You only live once. But if you lived like me, once is enough." - Frank Sinatra
"There was nothing creative, charming, admirable or innovative in Pokémon except that it parted small children from their money with brutal efficiency. It inexplicably featured the dramatic story of cockfighting monsters who lived in your pants." John Tynes in Salon.com article re Wizards of the Coast
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." -Marcus Aurelius
What is incredible about the Bible is not its divine authorship; it's that such a concoction of contradictory nonsense could be believed by anyone to have been written by an omniscient god. To do so, one would first have to not read the book, which is the practice of most Christians; or, if one does read it, dump in the trash can one's rational intelligence -- to become a fool for god, in other words. - American Atheists website
"Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky... Who watches every thing you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of 10 specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you, and he needs money." - George Carlin
"Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth, and you should save it for someone you love." - Butch Hancock
Atheism is a religion like health is a disease.
"I think that naming your ignorance God and pretending that, having named it, you have converted ignorance to knowledge is a sorry approach to the unknown."
"If triangles made a god, they would give him three sides." - Baron de Montesquieu
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." - Unknown (not Julius Ceasar)
"I'm like a baby, she's like a cat. When we're happy we both get fat." - Barenaked Ladies, "Life in a Nutshell"
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." - George H. W. Bush
"The average person needs trepanation like he needs a hole in the head."
