From Bellybuttonporn
Once upon a time I had a badass list of quotes up on my ISU webspace. Here it is.
Old Quotes
“It is not by speeches and resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided…but by iron and blood.”
—Otto Von Bismarck
“Warfare is the Tao of deception. Thus although capable, display incapability to them. When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When your objective is nearby, make it appear as if distant; when far away, create the illusion of being nearby.”—Sun-Tzu
“I tear my soul apart and I eat it some more.”
—Rob Zombie
“You’d be well advised not to plan my funeral before the body dies.”
—Jerry Cantrell
“Help me, you make me perfect, help me become somebody else.”
—Trent Reznor
“If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself, I would find a way.”
—Trent Reznor
“I need someone to ache for me the way I ache for you.”
—Stabbing Westward
“I reach to the sky and call out your name. And if I could trade…I would.”
—Offspring
“Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
—Hunter S. Thompson
“I’m breathin’ so I guess I’m still alive, though signs seem to tell me otherwise”
—Maynard James Keenan
“How long can we maintain? I wondered. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think than? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so, well, we’ll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere. Because it goes without saying that we can’t turn him loose. He’ll report us at once to some kind of outback nazi law enforcement agency, and they’ll run us down like dogs.
Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?”
—Hunter S. Thompson
“But I can’t feed on the powerless, When my cups already overfilled.”
—Chris Cornell
“Once, upon a time, I could love myself.”
—Eddie Vedder
“And now my bitter hands, grate on broken glass of what was everything.”
—Eddie Vedder
“Hear my name, take a good look, this could be the day...”
—Eddie Vedder
“I’ll rise and fall, let me take credit for both.”
—Eddie Vedder
“There be no shelter here… The front line is everywhere”
—Zach de la Rocha
“American eyes—American eyes—view the world from American eyes; bury the past, rob us blind. And leave nothing behind.”
—Zach de la Rocha
“Do unto others what was been done to me”
—Maynard James Keenan
“I need you to feel this, I need this to make me whole.”
—Maynard James Keenan
“I have found some kind of temporary sanity in this… shit, blood and come on my hands.”
—Maynard James Keenan
“I will find the center in you, I will chew it up and leave. I will elevate you, just enough to bring you down.”
—Maynard James Keenan
“He had a lot to say. He had a lot of nothing to say. We’ll miss him. We’re gonna miss him.”
—Maynard James Keenan
“Undeniable dilemma, but not a burden anyone should bear. Constant over-stimulation numbs me, but I would not want you any other way.”
—Maynard James Keenan
“Any scrap of compassion that still existed in my soul was permanently snuffed out when they cast me out into the flames.”—Mairsil, called the Pretender
“Wealth is a good thing, compared to poverty—your food is better, your robes are softer, and you companions have bathed more recently.”
—Kipkemboi, Kukemssa pirate
“This sort of behavior is left to the psychotic, dogmatic, fundamentalist believers you see on your TV everyday letting off bombs and killing people in the name of God. Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing…”—Found in Tool Album notes.
“Before you point your finger you should know that I’m the man. I’m the man, and you’re the man and he’s the man as well, so you can point your finger up your ass.”—Maynard James Keenan
“I sold my soul to make a record… Then you bought one!”
—Maynard James Keenan
“All you see and hear on TV is a product, waiting for your fairly dirty dollar, shut up and buy it, buy. Buy our new record! Buy, buy. Send more money!
—Maynard James Keenan
“I don’t look for trouble, but if it comes, I hide from it. Damn right, pretty boy. You may call me chicken, but I’ve known a lot of Kindred over the years who got smart just a few seconds too late. It’s not like we can’t die, it’s just that it don’t come natural anymore.”
“The blood is the life…”
—Vlad Tepes
“I look inside myself and see my heart is black.”
—Mick Jagger
“Civilization is a conspiracy to disguise the mutilation of nature.”
—Skyshroud Elite creed
I cried tears of love as I, with sharp things, sacrificed that which was the first part of my joy, my brother.
—Nod, Chronicle of Caine
And yet, I will root out the bad seed, I will weed out the worst of you, I will prune my dark tree, in the manner that my father, Adam, taught me.
—Nod, Chronicle of Caine, “Caine’s Law and Punishment”
And I said unto Michael, “Not by the One Above’s grace, but mine own will I live, in pride”
—Nod, Chronicle of Caine
Battle doesn’t need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don’t ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don’t ask why I fight.
“But if ever one of us is gifted with the love of a mortal
without Command or Awe,
without compulsion
a Love given freely,
then that Love will be as the gentle rain to even the lowliest of us.
And though we shall not Embrace it,
it will feed us as if we supped at our Father’s table
it will satisfy our deepest thirst…”
—Nod, Chronicle of Secrets, “Of Love”
“Sister, I won’t ask for forgiveness, my sins are all I have.”
—Bruce Springstein
And then, through dread Uriel God Almighty cursed me, saying :
“Then, for as long as you walk this earth, you and your children will cling to Darkness
You will drink only blood
You will eat only ashes
You will be always as you were at death,
Never dying, living on.
You will walk forever in Darkness, all you touch will crumble into nothing, until the last days.”
—Nod, Chronicle of Caine, “Temptation of Caine”
My childer, look not at your visage to curse me, for I know the beauty that lies within, and no greater beauty will there ever be.
—Nod, Chronicle of Caine, “Nosferat’s Words”
An end to reason, an end to order. Forget all that has been.
“It was big. Really, really big. No, bigger than that. It was big!”—Arna Kennerüd, Skynight
“Virtue has its rewards, as does its opposite.”
—Lim-Dul, the Necromancer
“I will go to any length to achieve my goal. Eternal life is worth any sacrifice.”
—Zur the Enchanter
“Were they to reduce us to ash, we would clog their throats and sting their eyes in payment.”
—Lovisa Coldeyes, Balduvian Chieftain
Shackles of gold are still shackles.
The less you have, the harder you fight for it.
“Was that it?”
—Ertai, Wizard Adept
“no home…no heart…no hope”
—Strongold Graffito
“If we cannot live proudly, we die so!”
—Eladamri, Lord of the Leaves
To become King of the Goblins, one must assassinate the previous king. Thus, only the most foolish seek positions of leadership.
“They shall drink sorrow’s dregs. They shall kill those whom once they loved.”
—Lim-Dûl, the Necromancer
Embermages aren’t well known for their diplomatic skills.
“You stop breathing for just a few minutes and everyone jumps to conclusions.”
—Zarkuu, Necrosavant
“And darkness shall be cast from me, for my soul resides in the sun.”
—Femeref dirge
“The blood on my hands is merely proof of my ambition."
—Kaervek
“What is crueler? To let a wound of the heart fester, or to simply cut it out?”
—Crovax
At what price beauty?
“I looked into its eyes, and its soul was so empty I saw no reflection, no light there.”
—Crovax
“When one has witnessed the unspeakable, ‘tis sometimes better to forget.”
—Vermamon the Elder
“Politics is a game—move a stone here, move a stone there—except sometimes the stones bleed.”
—Shauku, Endbringer
“Since I cannot stop death, I choose to stop life.”
—Kaervek
“It is not that you will go mad. It is that you will pray for madness.”
—Volrath
“There is a future in which I can see only mist and a single shadow.”
—Oracle en-Vec
“The sanctity of poverty is an invention of the rich.”
—Starke
Flash like daybreak to the fray.
—Motto of the Knights of Dawn
Fall like night upon the foe.
—Motto of the Knights of Dusk
Summer is buried there, centuries deep; a crypt of years where seasons sleep.
“If brute force doesn’t solve your problem, you’re not using enough.”
—Marshal Daniel Bishop, aide to commander of the Wyatt Theater, Federated Commonwealth
“If people built houses the way we write programs, the first woodpecker would wipe out civilization.”
“In God we trust, all others we polygraph.”
By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule [is] that simplicity increases robustness. It is correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really good basket
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!
Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all felt that one way or another.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer
During 1943 and part of 1944 our greatest worry was the possibility that Germany would perfect an atomic bomb before the invansion of Europe. In 1945, when we ceased worrying about what the Germans might do to us, we began to worry about what the government of the United States might do to other countries.
-Leo Szilard, physicist
One mogg to aim the catapult, one mogg to steer the rock.
It's hard to make a program foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
1. Don't Cheat.
2. When you're cheatin', don't get caught.
3. If you get caught, shoot first.
"Planeswalking isn't about walking. It's about falling and screaming."
-Xantcha, Phyrexian outcast
Some roads are paved with bad intentions.
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."
—Winston Churchill
When you pretend to be a theist, it is inevitable that you will have to participate in theistic events such as going to church, attending prayer meetings and kinship groups, and the like. This sucks away time that you could be using for working, studying, playing or just sleeping in. Atheists know better than anybody that our time is finite, so why waste it practicing primitive superstitious rituals?
—The Atheism Web
"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
—Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813.
"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."
—Benjamin Franklin, from "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728.
"The Bible"
Various Authors
This somewhat dull and rambling work has often been criticized. However, it is probably worth reading, if only so that you'll know what all the fuss is about. It exists in many different versions, so make sure you get the one true version.
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
"My parents never gave me that you-don't-know-how-good-you-have-it crap because they knew I would just laugh."
—Adam Carolla
"Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice." —H.L. Mencken
"Hmm..., This needs more eye of newt."
"You always want more eye of newt. If it were up to you, the brew would be nothing but newt eyes"
—Patty and Selma
"When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive at consensus as to when life begins, the judiciary at this point in the development of man's knowledge is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."—Roe v. Wade
WARNING!
DO NOT LOOK INTO LASER BEAM WITH REMAINING EYEBALL!
To a man with a computer, everything looks like data.
—Neil Postman
No, Homer, very few cartoons are broadcast live; it’s a terrible strain on the animators' wrists.
Your TV has an extra-large picture tube, which makes it vulnerable to the effects of the Earth’s magnetic field.
"Don't take life so seriously...It's not permanent"
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."
—Mark Twain
"Change is inevitable. Progress is not."
"It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years."
John von Neumann (1949)
Interoperation with matter-transporters using polar coordinate systems is discouraged, due to round-off and other algorithmic errors in certain ubiquitous floating-point implementations, leading to results which are best discreetly described as "disappointing." —RFC 1437
"Its a damned poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."
This is why I wont father more than four kids, because statistically the fifth one will be Chinese and I won't be able to understand him.
What I learned in college:
ON PROBLEM SOLVING
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail. — Abraham Maslow
ON DATING
When aiming for the common denominator, be prepared for the occasional division by zero.
ON EXTINCTION
Save the whales. Collect the whole set
ON HUMILITY
To err is human, to moo bovine
ON NUMBERS
Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3 — not even for very large values of 2.
ON WORLD POLITICS
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
ON DRUGS AND DEVELOPMENT
There are two major products to come out of Berkeley:
LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence
ON HIGHER EDUCATION
College is a fountain of knowledge... and the students are there to drink.
Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese
Today's woman puts on wigs, fake eyelashes, false fingernails, sixteen pounds of assorted make-up/shadows/blushes/creams, living bras, various pads that would make a linebacker envious, has implants and assorted other surgeries, then complains that she cannot find a "real" man.
As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in schools.
Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
n Emo Phillips
The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in
many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls the
"Four F's": 1. Fighting; 2. Fleeing; 3. Feeding; and 4. Mating.
— Psychology professor in
neuropsychology intro course
2B OR NOT 2B = FF
How does a spoiled rich girl change a lightbulb?
She says, "Daddy, I want a new apartment."
These are stupid ideas and these people should be given a damn good thrashing with the clue stick.
This message brought to you by Microsoft. Inventors of multitasking,
windowing, graphical user interfaces, the 32 bit OS, the Internet, the
wheel, fire, air, and God.
got clue?
"Your article on the wiles of the creationists states
that in Alabama all biology texts must now carry stickers
advising the reader that evolution is an 'unproven belief'
and 'should (only) be considered a theory.' One assumes,
in the interests of fair play, that the creationists
similarly insist that these stickers be affixed to Bibles."
John R. Harris, Letter to the Editor, L.A. Times
"Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will
not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every
assumption about the human condition"
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience:
The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1998), p. 6.
"A major function of fundamentalist religion is to bolster deeply
insecure and fearful people. This is done by justifying a way of life
with all of its defining prejudices. It thereby provides an appropriate
and legitimate outlet for one's anger. The authority of an inerrant
Bible that can be readily quoted to buttress this point of view becomes
an essential ingredient to such a life. When that Bible is challenged,
or relativized, the resulting anger proves the point categorically."
Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism,
(San Fransisco: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 5.
"It is true, of course, that the phrase 'separation of church and state'
does not appear in the Constitution. But it was inevitable that some
convenient term should come into existence to verbalize a principle so
clearly and widely held by the American people.... [T]he right to a fair
trial is generally accepted to be a constitutional principle; yet the
term "fair trial" is not found in the Constitution. To bring the point
even closer home, who would deny that "religious liberty" is a
constitutional principle? Yet that phrase too is not in the
Constitution. The universal acceptance which all these terms, including
"separation of church and state," have received in America would seem to
confirm rather than disparage their reality as basic American democratic
principles."
Leo Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom (Beacon Press: Boston,
1967).
"Jefferson's Danbury letter has been cited favorably by the Supreme
Court many times. In its 1879 Reynolds vs. U.S. decision the
high court said Jefferson's observations 'may be accepted almost as an
authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First]
Amendment.' In the court's 1947 Everson v. Board of Education
decision, Justice Hugo Black wrote, 'In the words of Thomas Jefferson,
the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to
erect a wall of separation between church and state.' It is only in
recent times that separation has come under attack by judges in the
federal court system who oppose separation of church and state."
Robert Boston, Why The Religious Right is Wrong About Separation
of Church & State (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 221
Theism's "continuing hold on the minds of many reasonable people is
surprising enough to count as a miracle in at least the original sense."
J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (New York: Oxford University
Press), p. 12.
"As Darwin so convincingly argued, there are many details which his
hypothesis explains while that of special creation does not."
J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (New York: Oxford University
Press), p. 140.
"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way
you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that
it can't be taken on its own merits."
Dan Barker
"I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God.
That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no
belief."
Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
(Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 87.
"The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever
believed Christian notions."
Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
(Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 106.
"If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why
pray?"
Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
(Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 108.
"To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and
bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance. That implies
that everyone else (such as the opposing football team, driver, student,
parent) is de-selected, unfavored by God, and that I am special,
above it all."
Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
(Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 109.
"Some theists, observing that all 'effects' need a cause, assert that
God is a cause but not an effect. But no one has ever observed an
uncaused cause and simply inventing one merely assumes what the argument
wishes to prove."
Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
(Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 109.
"The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state'
does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the
word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible.
Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are
still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience,
Omnipresence, Supernatural,Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity,
Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas,
Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope,
Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation,
Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility,
Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer,
Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden
Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy,
Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy,
Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic,
Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible."
Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
(Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 109.
"Ralph Reed likes to quote Alexis de Tocqueville on religion's central
place in American democratic society. The quotations are not always
accurate, but he is right about one important thing. Tocqueville, like
Benjamin Franklin, believed that religion is essential to the health of
republican liberty. However, Reed apparently closed the pages of
Democracy in America too soon. Had he read further, he would not
have missed Tocqueville's point that it is dangerous for religion to tie
itself to political institutions and to topical political controversy."
Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The
Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 21.
"So succesful were the drafters of the Constitution in defining
government in secular terms that one of the most powerful criticisms of
the Constitution when ratified and for succeeding decades was that it
was indifferent to Christianity and God. It was denounced by many as a
godless document, which is precisely what it is."
Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The
Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 23.
"Yet Robertson fails to follow up the implications of what he has
written about moral decline. If Americans are Christian — in fact, if
they are by dint of church membership more Christian than they were a
hundred years ago, and vastly more Christian than they were in the
eighteenth century — then how do we explain the decline of religiously
based morality?"
Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The
Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton,
1996), pp. 155-56.
"If anything is unconstitutional, it is government encouragement to pray
in the public schools. Moreover, the proposed constitutional amendment
to allow voluntary prayer is offensive on two counts. First, it
violates explicitly the intended secular base of the Constitution. And
far worse, it encourages the political use of religion in a way that
allows elected officials to evade their real responsibilities and to
claim for themselves a moral high ground that they too often have done
nothing to earn."
Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The
Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton,
1996), p. 165.
"Yes God has spoken, and He has not stuttered. The God of truth has
given us the Word of Truth, and it does not contain any untruth in it.
The Bible is the unerring Word of God.
"Inspiration includes not only all that the Bible explicitly teaches,
but also everything the Bible touches. This is true whether the Bible
is touching upon history, science, or mathematics. Whatever the Bible
declares, is true — whether it is a major point or a minor point."
Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, When Critics Ask, pp.12-13.
"The Bible is the inerrant...word of the living God. It is absolutely
infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and
practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history,
etc."
Jerry Falwell, Finding Inner Peace and Strength, p. 26.
"What was God doing (in His Time) for an eternity into His past before
He Created the Universe Ex Nihilo? God existed by Himself through an
Eternity before the Creation without needing a Universe. Why did He
suddenly desire to create the Universe?"
Peter A. Angeles, The Problem of God: A Short Introduction
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 67.
"To say that this Timeless God began Time along with the Universe at a
time when there was no Time implies that at that moment when He
initiated this Unique Event He was engaged in a Time, or at a time in
order to bring this Event about. He did something. What brought that
Event about?"
Peter A. Angeles, The Problem of God: A Short Introduction
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 67.
"If we ask, 'Where did the Universe come from?', our answer can only be:
'It doesn't come from anywhere." [...] There isn't any 'where' from
which it could come."
Peter A. Angeles, The Problem of God: A Short Introduction
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 67.
"Blind faith can justify anything. If a man believes in a different god, or
even if he uses a different ritual for worshipping the same god, blind
faith can decree that he should die - on the cross, at the stake, skewered
on a Crusader's sword, shot in a Beirut street, or blown up in a bar in
Belfast. Memes for blind faith have their own ruthless ways of propagating
themselves. This is true of patriotic and political as well as religious
blind faith."
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
(New edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 198.
"But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people
to believe something — it doesn't matter what — in the total absence
of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then
faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe
it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that
'evolution itself is a matter of faith' so silly. People believe in
evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of
overwhelming, publicly available evidence."
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
(New edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 198.
"If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized
complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution,
that deity must already have been vastly complex in the first place.
The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop,
simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious
intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the
luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an
explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the
existence of life as we know it!"
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton,
1986), p. 316.
"If such a God did exist, he could not be a beneficient God, such as the
Christians posit. What effrontery is it that talks about the mercy and
goodness of a nature in which all animals devour animals, in which every
mouth is a slaughter-house and every stomach a tomb!"
E.M. McDonald, "Design Argument Fallacies" An Anthology of
Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus,
1980), p. 90.
"If, when we perceive results similar to those that might be due to a
wise man, we conclude that they have been produced by a being similar to
a wise man, then, when we see results similar to those that might be due
an idiot, shall we not conclude that they have been produced by an
idiot?"
E.M. McDonald, "Design Argument Fallacies" An Anthology of
Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus,
1980), p. 91.
"The most extraordinary Roman soldiers that Rome ever heard of were
those soldiers that were set to watch the tomb of Jesus. They managed
to fall asleep simultaneously in order to allow Jesus to pass unseen,
and when they awoke, for a bribe they deliberately committed suicide by
admitting that they had slept — an admission that meant instant
execution. Was ever invention so stupidly desparate and medacity so
reckleslly absurd as that invention and that mendacity upon which rests
the story of the Resurrection, upon which the whole fabric of the
Christian faith has elected to stand or fall? The basis is too puerile
to support a story told by an idiot for the purpose of imposing upon a
fool."
W.S. Ross, "Did Jesus Christ Rise from the Dead?" An Anthology of
Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus,
1980), p. 211.
"It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything
upon insufficient evidence."
W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" An Anthology of
Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus,
1980), p. 282.
"As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the
beginning of the universe. This was first pointed out by St. Augustine.
When asked: What did God do before he created the universe? Augustine
didn't reply: He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions.
Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God
created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the
universe."
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam,
1988), p. 8
"Hubble's observations suggested that there was a time, called the big
bang, when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense.
Under such conditions all the laws of science, and therefore all ability
to predict the future, would break down. If there were events earlier
than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present
time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no
onservational consequences. One may say that time had a beginning at
the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be
defined. It should be emphasized that this beginning in time is very
different from those that had been considered previously. In an
unchanging universe a beginning in time is something that has to be
imposed by some being outside the universe; there is no physical
necessity for a beginning. One can imagine that God created the
universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the
universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be
a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the
instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to
make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be
meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang.
An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place
limits on when he might have carried out his job!"
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam,
1988), pp. 8-9.
"The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be
surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies
the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like
a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty."
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam,
1988), p. 124.
"Throughout the last 400 years, during which the growth of science had
gradually shown men how to acquire knowledge of the ways of nature and
mastery over natural forces, the clergy have fought a losing battle
against science, in astronomy and geology, in anatomy and physiology, in
biology and psychology and sociology. Ousted from one position, they
have taken up another. After being worsted in astronomy, they did their
best to prevent the rise of geology; they fought against Darwin in
biology, and at the present time they fight against scientific theories
of psychology and education. At each stage, they try to make the public
forget their earlier obscurantism, in order that their present
obscurantism may not be recognized for what it is."
Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" (1943) in Bertrand Russell
on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 209.
"The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it
labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds
that have nothing to do with their social consequences."
Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler,
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 118.
"Roughly, science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know."
Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler,
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 219.
"We must therefore ask ourselves: What sort of thing is it reasonable to
believe without proof?
I should reply: The facts of sense experience and the principles of
mathematics and logic — including the inductive logic employed in
science."
Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler,
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 253.
"If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you.
"But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'"
Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler,
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 261.
"But in the present state of psychology and physiology, belief in
immortality can, at any rate, claim no support from science, and such
arguments as are possible on the subject point to the probable
extinction of personality at death. We may regret the thought that we
shall not survive, but is a comfort to think that all the persecutors
and Jew-baiters and humbugs will not continue to exist for all eternity.
We may be told that they would improve in time, but I doubt it."
Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (New York: Oxford
University Press), pp. 108-09.
"Even if there were undesirable consequences if atheism were true,
this would not make atheism false. To think otherwise is to simply
engage in wishful thinking. 'If death if final, that would be a bad
thing. I dont want to believe anything which results in bad things.
Therefore, death is not final.' Compare that with the following,
which is no doubt on the minds of millions every week: 'If this is
not the winning lottery ticket, then I will be terribly disappointed.
I do not want to believe anything which results in my being terribly
disappointed. Therefore, this is the winning lottery ticket.' By
similar reasoning, no one's house would burn down, no one would go
bankrupt, no one would be killed in automobile accidents. All that
would be required to avert such disasters is to realize that terrible
consequences would follow if those things happened and then realize
that one does not want to believe it. Then it wouldn't happen. But
clearly that is absurd."
Doug Krueger, "That Colossal Wreck"
"The god of the Bible measures up to the level of a petty and vicious
tyrant. The god of the bible punishes babies for the sins of their
parents (Exodus 20:5, 34:7; Numbers 14:18; 2 Samuel 12:13-19); punishes
people by causing them to become cannibals and eat their children (2
Kings 6:24-33, Lamentations 4:10-11); gives people bad laws, even
requiring the sacrifice of their firstborn babies, so that they can
be filled with horror and know that god is their lord (Ezekiel 20:25-26);
causes people to believe lies so that he can send them to hell
(2 Thessalonians 2:11), and many other atrocities, far too many to list
here. It would not be hard to measure up to, and exceed, that level of
moral purity. Atheists surpass it every day."
Doug Krueger, "That Colossal Wreck"
"The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most
implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example,
while loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in
Palestine?"
Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One? (Madison, WI:
FFRF, 1997), p.
"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, In God We Trust: But Which One? (Madison, WI:
FFRF, 1997), p.
If a plane crashes and 99 people die while 1 survives, it is called
a miracle. Should the families of the 99 think so?
Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One? (Madison, WI:
FFRF, 1997), p. 154.
"As Christians try to force prayer into public schools, they often settle
for a 'moment of silence.' But that supposedly innocuous 'moment of
silence' is a deafening roar to a nonbeliever."
Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One? (Madison, WI:
FFRF, 1997), p. 163.
"Life can be beautiful, profound, and awe-inspiring, even without an
irate god threatening us with eternal torment."
Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One? (Madison, WI:
FFRF, 1997), p.
"So how do theists respond to arguments like this? [The Argument from
Evil] They say there is a reason for evil, but it is a mystery. Well,
let me tell you this: I'm actually one hundred feet tall even though I
only appear to be six feet tall. You ask me for proof of this. I have a
simple answer: it's a mystery. Just accept my word for it on faith. And
that's just the logic theists use in their discussions of evil."
Quentin Smith, "Two Ways to Defend Atheism"
"If any spirit created the universe, it is malevolent, not benevolent."
Quentin Smith, "The Anthropic Coincidences, Evil and the Disconfirmation
of Theism"
"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because it is
absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is
impossible."
Tertullian
"The most serious demand for unquestioned belief is, of course, the
atonement. First the believer is to suspend familiar notions of
justice, such as punishment for the guilty as opposed to an innocent
party. You are then expected to accept the necessity of blood
sacrifice for sin; that wrongdoing must be paid for, and not
necessarily in proportion to the crime. A father's sacrifice of his
innocent son is supposed to be not only just but generous and
wonderful. Then the temporary three-day feath of this one person is
supposed to wipe out all the wrongdoing and ineptitude of a species.
And finally, you should believe that all you need do to erase
responsibility for your actions and enter a haven of eternal reward
is to believe. It's no wonder that once a convert has wrapped his or
her mind around this story, anything can be accepted as truth. The
rest of fundamentalist doctrine can be easily swallowed, including
Jonah."
Marlene Winell, Leaving the Fold (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger,
1993), p. 75.
"The fundamentalist belief system is one that purports to have all
the answers. It also claims to be the only way — all deviations
lead to hell. It follows then that parents who believe this would
be very concerned about what their children believe. Any alternative
ways of thinking about major life questions would be highly
threatening. Consequently, the fundamentalist household rarely
encourages children to explore their own thoughts, to be open-minded
about ideas, or to come to their own conclusions. In fact,
fundamentalist parents are typically vocal in their opposition to the
teaching of critical thinking skills or values clarification in
schools."
Marlene Winell, Leaving the Fold (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger,
1993), p. 120.
"In his book, Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment
and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse, Philip Greven (1992),
a professor of history at Rutgers University, says that the roots of
America's unusally angry, violent, and crime-ridden society lie in the
country's Judeo-Christian heritage. Greven examines cases of childhood
punishment and the rationales for physical punishment among those with
strong Protestant conviction. The latter usually boil down to the
belief that it is necessary for parents to break the will of their
children to gain their respect and obedience. In reality, he says
physical assault only breeds rage and hostility, with negative outcomes."
Marlene Winell, Leaving the Fold (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger,
1993), p. 126.
"One of the reasons why people like me who deal with the
creation/evolution issue all the time get very frustrated with, say,
Institute for Creation Research people and so forth, is because they
are constantly saying X didn't happen. And then it takes a great deal
longer to explain why X did happen, gaps in the fossil record or
whatever."
Eugenie Scott in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 19.
"I can't tell you how much I enjoyed Dr. Berlinski's statement, because
he focused in on one of the major deficiencies of the four people on the
other side of the table who argue against evolution. That major
theoretical deficiency is they have no explanation for natural history."
Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 22.
"Now we know the other side advocates intelligent design as a primary
characteristic of intelligent design when it is squared with the fossil
record. The fossil record — and I can give you specific examples — is
characertized best by sequences of appearances and disappearances. Now
think what that means. What that means is that the characteristic that
best describes the intelligent designer who would have designed this
fossil record is incompetent because everything the intelligent designer
designed, with about one percent exceptions, has immediately become
extinct. Intelligent design has no explanation for the successive
character in the fossil record, evolution has a perfect explanation,
and that is the appearance of new forms and the extinction of others."
Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 22.
"I can give you several examples of new species that have emerged within
human observation. The best example that I can give you is the
butterfly, the genus of butterfly known as Hedylypta. Hedylypta is
a genus of butterfly that feeds on various plants. It's endemic to the
Hawaiian Islands, which means it's only found there. And there turn out
to be two species of Hedylypta with mouthparts that only allow them —
only allow them to feed on bananas. Now why is that significant? It is
significant because bananas are not native to the Hawaiian Islands.
They were introduced about 1,000 years ago by the Polynesians — we
know this from the written records of the Hawaiian Kingdom — and what
that means is that by mutation and natural selection, these two species
have emerged on the Hawaiian Islands within the last 1,000 years. And I
think that's a very good case in point."
Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 24.
"In the November7th or November 14th issue of Science magazine, a
number of investigators wanted to test the Darwinian hypothesis that you
folks say is never tested, and the way in which they did this was to take
the receptor protein for the human growth hormone — it's a receptor to
which the human growth hormoe fits in precisely — and they did a terrible
genetic disservice. They mutated — they cut out an essential amino acid
right in the middle of the receptor, called tryptophan. With that gone,
just like that mousetrap, it wouldn't have been expected to work. They
then allowed a natural selection process to take place to see whether the
cells under their own observation could mutate the receptor gene
sufficiently to bind the receptor, and after seven generations, lo and
behold, there it was. It illustrates beautifully the ability of natural
selection to respond to mutations in proteins to co-evolve."
Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 25.
"When you say you don't find it [the two observed instances of speciation
listed above] impressive, that's what Richard Dawkins calls the argument from
personal incredulity. My evidence against evolution is that I don't
believe it."
Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 25.
"Is it necessary to invoke the hand of the Almighty in something like
understanding cell division or understanding an internal combustion
engine? ... If not, why is it necessary in understanding the history
of life?
Eugenie Scott in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 27.
"Fred Hoyle is a distinguished astronomer, as you pointed out. When he
speaks about biological phenomena, I would not say that he speaks ex
cathedra. As a matter of fact, one of the statements that Fred Hoyle
made with Chandra Wickramasinghe is that actually insects are smarter than
we think they are, but they're just not letting us know."
Eugene Scott in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 42.
"The other end of the room is very far away and it should not surprise you
that I get there with one step at a time, and that's what we are talking
about."
Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 46.
"To someone who advocates intelligent design, does the sequence of these
organisms in the fossil record simply mean that the intelligent designer
was incompetent, he kept making things and they went extinct, extinct, or
that he was restless — 'I'll try this, I'll try that, I'll try the other
thing,' — or does it mean that in fact these organisms are related by
descent with modification?"
Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 50.
"Mr. Behe has of course compared, like it or not, compared the
extraordinary complexity of the human cell to the mousetrap. He said if
we look at that mousetrap, it was created by a human. In fact, Mr.
Miller improved on it, as you saw earlier tonight. Therefore, if that's
complicated, then indeed the cell must also have been designed by an
intelligence. And as I thought about it tonight, it's a little bit —
we were all talking about nature analogies — it's a little bit like
looking at a mole build a molehill. You say, That's very interesting.
Then we walk out in the woods the next day and we notice a big mountain
off in the distance. And we say, Good grief, that's enormously large. A
really big mole must have built that. The truth of the matter is, it's
not logical. We should be looking for different forces that result in
different things. Your mousetrap was built by human hands because its
components are inanimate objects. Cellular life is living, vibrant,
breathing, changing matter. You're not just comparing apples to oranges,
you are comparing plastic apples to organic oranges, and I think
therefore this analogy fails."
Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation"
_Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 50.
"It should be noted that it could be argued that there is something
repugnant about the idea that one might make use of Rescher's version
of Pascal's Wager argument in the service of apologetics. The reason
for this claim is that, in order to use the argument as a tool of
apologetics, we do not need to suppose that it is a good argument in
the second of the two senses distinguished earlier in this paper. If
the point is just to get people to believe in God, then it doesn't
matter whether it is overall most reasonable for there people to
believe in God—and so we could, quite cynically, make full use of
the Wager argument against not terribly bright people in full
knowledge of the fact that the argument is defective (i.e. in full
knowledge of the fact that it is not reasonable to accept all of the
premises of the argument). However, if we care about what it is most
rational for people to believe (in the light of the evidence which
they currently possess, and in light of the cognitive abilities which
they enjoy), then it would be irresponsible (and indeed immoral) for
us to use the Wager argument on the sorts of people in whom it could
reasonably be expected to bring about belief. (If we think that
there are independent means of showing that God exists, then we should
appeal to those means. If we think there are no such independent
arguments, then perhaps we should question our own belief that God
exists.)"
Graham Oppy, "On Rescher On Pascal's Wager" (1990)
"Why is every utterance of the Pope considered to be worthy of
worldwide attention and respect? It's like the fawning reverence
that was accorded every banal platitude ever uttered by the late
Mother Teresa. But the Pope is not exactly on the cutting edge of
world events — or anything else, for that matter. It was only a
little over a year ago, in October 1996, that John Paul II
announced that the scientific theory of evolution could be said
to be valid. That message was received with enthusiastic approval
in many circles throughout the world. Warm congratulations were
offered to John Paul, just as they had been in 1979. In that year
he declared that the Roman Catholic Church had been mistaken when
it sentenced a 70-year-old Galileo to house arrest (with threats of
the tortures of The Inquisition) for insisting that the Earth
orbits the Sun, not vice versa. Mistaken?! No, not mistaken. A
mistake is when you slip the wrong key into your front door. The
Church's treatment of Galileo, one of the world's few geniuses, was
viciously cruel and betrays the unenlightened, progress-impeding
attitude that has dominated the Church since its inception. And
they were as wrong as it is possible to be."
Judith Hayes, "The Papacy Comes of Age!" The Happy Heretic
February 1998
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "No, not if you did not know."
Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
Door-to-door Mormon: "Would you like a copy of the Bible / Koran / Book of Mormon?"
Freethinker: "No, thanks, I'm waiting for the sequel."
"The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray."
[Robert G. Ingersoll]
Christian: I'll pray for you.
Atheist: Then I'll think for both of us.
"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do."
[Bertrand Russell]
"I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion,
as organized in its churches, has been and still is
the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."
[Bertrand Russell]
"It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there
is no reason whatsoever for supposing it to be true."
[Bertrand Russell]
"So far as I can remember, there is not one
word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."
[Bertrand Russell]
"There has been a rumor in recent years to the effect that I have
become less opposed to religious orthodoxy than I formerly was.
This rumor is totally without foundation. I think all the great
religions of the world- Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam,
and Communism- both untrue and harmful."
[Bertrand Russell, 1957]
"... when people begin to philosophize they seem to think
it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid."
[Bertrand Russell in "Theory of Knowledge"]
"I was told that the Chinese said that they would 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]
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources
of cruelty."
Bertrand Russell, "Unpopular Essays"
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
[Carl Sagan]
"... why have those countries with a strong Church-State alliance displayed
such an eagerness to enforce religious dogmas and eliminate dissent through
the power of the state. Why has Christianity refused, whenever possible, to
allow its beliefs to compete in a free marketplace of ideas? The answer is
obvious — and revealing. Christianity is peddling an inferior product, one
that cannot withstand critical investigation. Unable to compete favorably
with other theories, it has sought to gain a monopoly through a state
franchise, which means: through the use of force."
George Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus, 1989), p. 114.
"If everything must have a cause then God must have a cause. If there
can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as
God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument."
Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), pp. 6-7.
"My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease
born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I
cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to
civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it
caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in
time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared
to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others."
Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), p. 24.
"Justifying the claim that something does not exist is not quite the
same as proving or having arguments that it doesn't, but it is what we
are talking about. That is, we need not have a proof that God does not
exist in order to justify atheism. Atheism is obligatory in the absence
of any evidence for God's existence."
Michael Scriven, "God and Reason" Critiques of God
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1997) p. 105.
"If theology were a part of reasonably inquiry, there would be no
objection to an atheist's being a professor of theology. That a man's
being an atheist is an absolute bar to his occupying a chair of theology
proves that theology is not an open-minded and reasonable inquiry.
Someone may object that a professor should be interested in his subject
and an atheist cannot be interested in theology. But a man who
maintains that there is no god must think it a sensible and interesting
question to ask whether there is a god; and in fact we find that many
atheists are interested in theology."
Richard Robinson, "Religion and Reason" Critiques of God
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1997) pp. 117-18.
"Christian faith is a habit of flouting reason in forming and
maintaining one's answer to the question whether there is a god. Its
essence is the determination to believe that there is a god no matter
what the evidence may be."
Richard Robinson, "Religion and Reason" Critiques of God
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1997) p. 121.
"There is virtually nothing which the Christian will accept as
evidence of God's evil. If disasters that are admittedly 'unmerited,
pointless, and incapable of being morally rationalized' [quoting Hick] are
compatible with the 'goodness' of God, what could possibly qualify as
contrary evidence? The 'goodness' of God, it seems, is compatible with any
state of affairs. While we evaluate a man with reference to his actions, we
are not similarly permitted to judge God. God is immune from the judgment of
evil as a matter of principle."
George Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus, 1989), p. 86
"I am arguing that if we are not justified in believing that no reason
would justify God in allowing the brutal rape and murder, then we are
not justified in believing that no reason would justify the onlooker
for allowing the same act."
Bruce Russell, "Defenseless" The Evidential Argument
from Evil (ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1996), p. 198.
"Whatever good you would do out of fear of punishment, or hope of reward
hereafter, the Atheist would do simply because it is good; and
being so, he would receive the far surer and more certain reward,
springing from well-doing, which would constitute his pleasure, and
promote his happiness."
Ernestine L. Rose, "A Defence of Atheism" (1878, Women
Without Superstition ed. Annie Laurie Gaylor, Madison, WI:
FFRF, 1997), p. 85.
"There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the
Dark Ages."
Ruth Hermence Green, "" (1980, Women Without Superstition
ed. Annie Laurie Gaylor, Madison, WI: FFRF, 1997), p.
"But 'chance' is only a word invented by humans to conceal our
ignorance. If we perfectly understood all the laws of motion, we
could infallibly predict whether a coin will come down heads or tails.
A Christian believes that God does perfectly understand His own laws
and knows which side up the coin will land, but Epicureans and
neo-Darwinists believe that nobody knows!"
Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), p. 85.
"There are degrees of being wrong. The Creationists are at the bottom
of the scale. They pull every trick in the book to justify their
position. Indeed, at times, they verge right over into the downright
dishonest ... Their arguments are rotten, through and through."
Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies,
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1982), pp. 303, 321.
"If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every
human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and
aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding
men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty
Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain
extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined
with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?"
Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical
Library, 1950), p. 27.
"Selling eternal life is an unbeatable business, with no customers
ever asking for their money back after the goods are not delivered."
Victor J. Stenger
"Those who look to science to provide evidence to bolster
their faith in the fantasy of God won't find it in the ripples
of the big bang."
Victor J. Stenger, "Big Bang Ripples No Message from God"
(http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/vjs/www/huweb.txt)
"In the popular imagination, the Big Bang is a great explosion; at one
time there was nothing, then matter erupted into previously empty
space. However, the Big Bang is the beginning of spacetime itself,
not an event in time."
Taner Edis, Is Anybody Out There?
"Asking about a time before the beginning of our spherical spacetime is
like asking what lies north of the North Pole. There is no such
thing."
Taner Edis, Is Anybody Out There?
"When confronted with a demand that the universe have a cause, infidels
have usually pointed out that God was not much of an explanation.
This is true enough, but not really a positive argument. After
mechanistic explanation became popular, infidels liked to restrict
causality to the chain of causes in an eternal material universe,
pointing out that no supernatural cause was then necessary.
Plausible, but still rather defensive. Today's skeptic can do better.
In all likelihood, the universe is uncaused. It is random. _It just
is._"
Taner Edis, Is Anybody Out There?
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million
typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare.
Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."
Robert Wilensky
What was Carl Sagan's perspective on religion, according to his widow?
"Carl did not want to believe. He wanted to know."
Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's widow)
"Some very cruel people, who have made life miserable for others, may
deserve a lengthy period of punishment. We may even grant, for the sake
of argument, that some deserve thousands of years of intense punishment.
But can anyone literally merit unending punishment? It is natural to
suppose that each sin a person commits merits some finite degree of
punishment. To take an analogy from the legal sphere, we normally
suppose that a burglar deserves a few years of imprisonment, and that
it would be unjust to imprison him indefinitely. However, to put the
point crudely, if each sin an unrepentant sinner commits adds a finite
number of years in hell, the total number of years in hell will be
finite (assuming the number of sins is finite)."
C. Stephen Layman, The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the
Fondation of Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1991), p. 33.
"I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast
hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them
to babes..."
Jesus, Matthew 11:25
"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
man in the bonds of Hell."
St. Augustine
"I told [new Christian Coalition president] Don Hodel when he joined
us, I said, 'My dear friend, I want to hold out to you the possibility
of selecting the next president of the United States because I
think that's what we have in this organization. And I believe we can
indeed."
Pat Robertson, Sept 13., 1997
"If we have that basic core and we have identified people, this was
the power of every machine that has ever been in politics. You know,
the Tammany Halls and Hague and the Chicago machine and the Byrd machine
in Virginia and all the rest of them. They have identified a core of
people who have bought into their values whatever they were, and they
worked the election and brought out people to vote. The other people
were diffuse and fragmented and they lost and the people that had the
core won."
Pat Robertson, Sept 13, 1997
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful
God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."
—Gene Roddenberry.
"I used to think it was terrible that life was so unfair. Then I thought
'wouldn't it be much worse if life really were fair, and all the terrible
things that happen to us occur because we actually deserve it.'"
Marcus, Babylon 5.
"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I
consider the capacity for it terrifying."
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick.
"One man's religion is another man's belly laugh."
Robert A. Heinlein.
"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H.Sapiens is that the Lord
God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine
adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and
becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous
notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to
found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in
history."
Robert A. Heinlein.
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
[Mark Twain]
"Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual
intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven"
[Mark Twain]
"If there is a God, he is a malign thug."
[Mark Twain]
"There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small
budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one—
the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and
stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession—
at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery texts [in the Bible] remained;
the practice changed; that was all."
["Mark Twain and the Three R's, by Maxwell Geismar, p.109]
"O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot
dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their
wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a
hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows
with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little
children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and
hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of
winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge
of the grave and denied it..."
[Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"]
"These people's God has shown them by a million acts that he respects none of
the Bible's statues. He breaks every one of them himself, adultery and all."
["Mark Twain and the Three R's, by Maxwell Geismar, p.124]
"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless
exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print
anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast"
[Mark Twain, _Reflections on Religion_, 1906]
"Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet
broke a chain or freed a human soul."
[Mark Twain]
"Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but
a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning
but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles."
[James Watson, winner of the Nobel prize for
his co-discovery of the structure of DNA]
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
Voltaire
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact,
every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of
reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
Thomas Jefferson
"And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the
Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed
with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter."
Thomas Jefferson
"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is
filled with falsehoods and errors."
Thomas Jefferson
"They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me,
will be exerted in opposition of their schemes. And they believe
rightly: for I have sworn upon the alter of god eternal hostility
against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Thomas Jefferson
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can
stand by itself."
Thomas Jefferson
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as
false, and by rulers as useful."
Seneca the Younger (4? B.C. - 65 A.D.)
"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling
a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
Abraham Lincoln
"To fear to face an issue is to believe the worst is true."
Ayn Rand
"Thinking men cannot be ruled."
Ayn Rand
"To rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the
side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer."
Ayn Rand
"Beware of the man of one book."
Thomas Aquinas
"If Jesus is the answer, then what was the question?"
Jeffery Jay Lowder
And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"
They replied,"You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of
our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very
selfhood revealed."
And Jesus replied, "What?”
"I think I'll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don't
believe in Gosh too, you'll be darned to heck."
Evolution is both fact and theory.
Creationism is neither.
Power corrupts;
Absolute power corrupts absolutely;
God is all-powerful.
Draw your own conclusions
Theists think all gods but theirs are false.
Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one.
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered.
Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
It's your god.
They're your rules.
*You* go to hell.
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
The Wise Man Says it to the World.
"If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you."
[As seen on a button]
"If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!"
[Clark Adams]
"As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" — probably
because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on."
[Woody Allen]
"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka"
and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
[Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"]
"In fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation
Man came up with for *anything* until about 1926 was stupid."
[Dave Barry]
"Dear God. We paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing."
[Bart Simpson saying grace]
"Marge, have you ever actually sat down and read this thing?
Technically, we're not even allowed to go to the bathroom."
[Father Lovejoy on "The Simpson's"]
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
[First Amendment, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution]
"...Any organization could profit from a 10-year-old member with
enough strength of character to refuse to swear falsely."
[New York Times editorial, 12/12/93, on the Boy Scouts' refusing
membership to Mark Welsh, who would not sign a religious oath]
"If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be
wearing little Electric Chairs around their necks instead of crosses"
[Lenny Bruce]
"No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor
should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."
[Republican Presidential Nominee George Bush]
"The night of December 25, to which date the Nativity of Christ was
ultimately assigned, was exactly that of the birth of the Persian savior
Mithra, who, as an incarnation of eternal light, was born the night of
the winter solstice (then dated December 25) at midnight, the instant
of the turn of the year from increasing darkness to light."
[Joseph Campbell, _The Mythic Image_, Bollingen
Series C, Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 33]
"I don't believe in god because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
[Clarence Darrow, speech, Toronto, 1930
"I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if
so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not
believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best
friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."
[Charles Darwin]
"And it's not just faith itself: it's the idea that faith is a virtue and the
less evidence there is, the more virtuous it is. You can actually quote,
well, Tertullian for example: "It is certain because it is impossible."
Sir Thomas Brown, actually seeking for more difficult things to believe,
because things for which there is mere evidence are just too easy, and it's
no test of his faith. In order to have a test of your faith, you must be
asked to believe really daft things like the transubstantiation, you know,
the blood of Christ turning into wine, and stuff... That is so manifestly
absurd that you've got to be a really great believer, in the class of the
Electric Monk, in order to believe it..... You're actually showing off your
believing credentials by the ability to believe something like that...
If it were an easy thing to believe, substantiated by facts, then it
wouldn't be any great achievement."
[Richard Dawkins, interview with Douglas Adams]
"All Bibles are man-made."
[Thomas Edison]
"So far as religion of the day is concerned, it
is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk."
[Thomas Edison]
"I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be
introduced into the public schools of the United States."
[Thomas Edison]
"If people are good only because they fear punishment,
and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
[Albert Einstein]
"If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing"
[Anatole France]
"I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense,
reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use."
[Galileo]
"The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the
universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation,
is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false,
and at the least an error of faith."
[Catholic Church's decision against Galileo Galilei]
"To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own
observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to
command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand
what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover."
[Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of
Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]
"It is surely harmful to souls to make it
a heresy to believe what is proved."
[Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of
Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]
"If there is a God, atheism must strike Him
as less of an insult than religion."
[Edmond and Jules de Goncourt]
"Having been admonished by this Holy Office [the Inquisition] entirely to
abandon the false opinion that the Sun was the center of the universe and
immovable, and that the Earth was not the center of the same and that it
moved... I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and
detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error
and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church."
[Galileo Galilei, Recantation, 22 June 1633]
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
entire intellectual heritage — good teaching — than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?"
[Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer"]
"In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that
it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that
apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not
merit equal time in physics classrooms."
[Stephen J. Gould]
"The churches beg — and if we don't give them money, why, they
take it anyway, forcibly, by means of this unjust state tax exemption."
[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,
Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"How can a preacher talk with a straight face about political graft?
He is, himself, profiting by one of the most notorious
political grafts in this country."
[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,
Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"Is a church too small and too poor to pay taxes? That means
that not enough people want the church seriously enough to pay for
its upkeep. Then, why should such a church exist? Why should
atheists, agnostics and non-churchgoers be forced to maintain such
a useless, unwanted church by granting it tax exemption?"
[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,
Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous;
those in philosophy only ridiculous."
[David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739)]
"Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have
at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice."
[Robert Green Ingersoll]
"I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment
that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders."
[Robert G. Ingersoll]
"The Declaration of Independence "was a denial, and the first denial
of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon
one man to govern others."
[Robert G. Ingersoll, "Individuality"]
"This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the
purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves."
[Robert G. Ingersoll]
"It is possible to pay another man's debts on his behalf, but it is not
possible to make a guilty man innocent by suffering in his place."
[Carl Lofmark, _What is the Bible?_]
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."
[Delos McKown]
"Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof"
[Ashley Montague]
"Christians say that—without exception—their God answers all of their
prayers; it's just that He sometimes says "yes" and other times "no,"
"maybe," or "wait." Of course the same could be said of the rain-god,"Bob."
[Rev. Donald Morgan]
"I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my
face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're
in a body bag. You don't know until election night."
[Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition Exec. Director]
"The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars,
and miseries than any other name has caused."
[John E. Remsburg, The Christ(1910)]
"We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship."
George Wald, U.S. biochemist
"The Origin of Optical Activity," in Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, vol. 69 (1957)
"You are using the time-honored strategy of ignoring my point."
"My all-time favorite quote is by me, and this is it." –me
"Hell, there are no rules here— we're trying to accomplish something."
— Thomas A. Edison
Never end a sentence with a preposition!
This is something up with which I will not put.
“Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation”
yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.
Broad-mindedness, n.: The result of flattening high-
mindedness out.
There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be
burned for an opinion.
All the good ones are taken.
"Microwave oven? Whaddya
mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks."
Murphy was an optimist.
Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats —approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
Get forgiveness now —tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
You are here ———> * But you're not all there.
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
A clairvoyant is a person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron —
namely, that he is a blockhead.
A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so you won't have to watch commercials.
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.
The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants.
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the contrary, nohow.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example. — La Rouchefoucauld
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem. Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received a single point on his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
"Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm
rich." — "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones]
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. — Voltaire
The First Rule of Program Optimization:
Don't do it.
The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
Don't do it yet.
Michael Jackson Goldenstern's Rules: (1) Always hire a
rich attorney (2) Never buy from a rich salesman.
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with. Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using other animals; they've
piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern ountries on top of cows,raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle
Eastern persons. None of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer. — Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape at about 30 miles/second. — Grishman, Assembly Language Programming
Gyroscope, n.: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin. — Webster's Seventh New Collegiate
Dictionary.
In fifteen minutes, everyone will be famous. — Andy Warhol
kibophobia (ki' bo fo beeya): n. The fear of Kibo.
kibophobik (ki' bo fo bik): n. The fear of Kibo's palindromes.
If you type "rm *" right now I'll give you a million dollars!!!
The Roman Rule:
The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.
People accept you ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first.
obscenity is the crutch of inarticulate motherfuckers
The optimist says the glass is half full.
The pessimist says the glass is half empty.
The pragmatist, being thirsty, drinks the water.
>Some people like killer robots who hunt down people, you know.
A relationship doomed from the word "go"
Charles Darwin has been quite dead for 116 years. It is his theory of natural selection that has held up for 150 years, not all of his and his contemporaries observations. Darwin was a Naturalist not a geologist, microbiologist or paleontologist. If Charles Darwin had not published his theory, someone else certainly would have. It seems the creationist mind set wants to hold Darwin personally accountable for the modern interpretation of his theory and ignore the rest of the evidence. Yet we don't see creationists attacking Einstein's and Hawkings' theoretical physics which undermines the intelligent design argument to a greater magnitude that evolution ever could.
—the atheism web
Meyer and his colleagues are anxious to throw in the towel and give up when the scientific going get tough and just attribute these things, known and unknown to a intelligent designer. While these might seem like good places to place a god, creator, or intelligent designer, we should not give up so easily. History will bear this out also. Every time religion dogma has met scientific principles, religion has lost. The earth is no longer flat, nor does the sun go around the earth any longer. Imagine the consequences for example if Jonas Salk, while looking at Polio Virus cells decided it was "irreducibly complex" therefore intelligently designed and decided he could go no further. Polio stays an act of god, not nature and thus, incurable.
—the Atheism Web
Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day. Give a man religion and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
"There are atheist in foxholes as sure as their are deist. But there can be no agnostics in foxholes. War is the one thing that will cause you to decide one way or another...."
I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex.
I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
-Mark Twain
Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.
Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.
All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
- George Bernard Shaw
"Death is not everything. It is more cruel not to be able to die." – Nosferatu
"Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity."
- Michel de Montaigne (French philosopher, essayist) (1533-1592)
"The true charter of liberty is independence, maintained by force."
- Voltaire
“Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
- Robert Orben
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
- Aldous Huxley
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
“The road of good intentions is paved with Hell."
- Spencer Ante
“Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibal will be a cannibal, of the crusades a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!", but "That's funny..." "
- Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
“All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexander Woolcott
“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!"
- Emiliano Zapata
“A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him."
- Brendan Francis
“The great question...which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years into the feminine soul, is 'What do women want?'"
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
“Efficiency is intelligent laziness."
- David Dunham
"Men, I want you just thinking of one word all season. One word and one word only: Super Bowl."
- Bill Peterson
“Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come home."
- Bill Cosby
“Only with the heart can we know and understand the secrets of the soul."
- Dick Innes
“Get busy living, or get busy dying. Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free."
- Both from the movie: The Shawshank Redemption
“A thousand words are worth a picture - and they load faster, too."
- Unknown
“Americans always try to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."
- Winston Churchill
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
- Gandhi
“Have you ever noticed.... Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
- George Carlin
“Man, I am so ticked off – Win98 keeps crashing on me!”
“Yeah, I hated waiting for my Linux machine to boot up that time it crashed.
Denier: You cannot produce one piece of evidence of Jews being killed in concentration camps.
Shermer: [hands denier an envelope] Here are arial photos of Jews being marched into mass gas-chambers.
Denier: [not opening envelope] You cannot produce one piece of evidence of Jews being killed in concentration camps.
Fact: A state or an event.
Theory: Our explanation of a fact.
Belief: What we wish the facts were.
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a
degree that it would be perverse to withold provisional
assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise
tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time
in physics classrooms.
-Stephen Jay Gould
The pro-Democrat argument (among people with any economic sense that is) has been that the Republicans would press their moral agenda if in power. Thus, we needed Democrats to keep abortion legal, put pro-civil liberties judges on the Supreme Court, be in less of hurry to give the police summary execution powers, etc.
December 12, 1984. Georgia. After the first jolt failed to kill Alpha Otis Stephens, he struggled for eight minutes before a second jolt finished the job. The first jolt took two minutes, and then there was a six-minute pause so his body could cool before physicians could examine him (and declare that another jolt was needed). During that six-minute interval, Stephens took 23 breaths
1. -Radelet, Michael L. "Post-Furman Botched Executions." Northern Illinois University Department of Sociology. http://www.soci.niu.edu/~criterim/dp/dppapers/mike2
One thing vampire children have to be taught at an early age is, don’t run with a wooden stake.
-jack Handey
Instead of a seeing eye dog, what about a gun? It’s cheaper than a dog, plus if you walk around shooting all the time, people are going to get out of the way. Cars too!
-Jack Handey
The first thing was, I learned to forgive myself. Then I told myself, “Go ahead and do whatever you want, it’s okay by me.”
-Jack Handey
Consider the daffodil. And while you’re doing that, I’ll be here, looking through your stuff.
-Jack Handey
Instead of burning a guy at the stake, what about burning him at the stilts? It probably lasts longer, plus it moves around.
-Jack Handey
Higher beings from outer space may not want to tell us the secrets of life, because we’re not ready. But maybe they’ll change their tune after a little torture.
-Jack Handey
As the snow started to fall, he tugged his coat tigher around himself. Too tight, as it turned out. “This is the fourth coat crushing this year, “ said the police sergeant as he outlined the body with a special pencil that writes on snow.
-Jack Handey
The other day I got out my can opener and was opening a can of worms when I thought, “What am I doing?!”
-Jack Handey
I’m telling you, just attach a big parachute to the plane itself! Is anyone listening to me?!
-Jack Handey
I think there probably should be a rule that if you’re talking about how many loaves of bread a bullet will go through, it’s understood that you mean lengthwise loaves. Otherwise it makes no sense.
-Jack Handey
One thing a computer can do that most humans can’t is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse.
-Jack Handey
I wish I had a dollar for every time I spent a dollar, because then, yahoo!, I’d have all my money back.
-Jack Handey
Isn’t it funny how one minute life can be such a struggle, and the next minute you’re just driving real fast, swerving back and forth across the road?
-Jack Handey
One way I think you can tell if you have a curse on you is if you open a box of toothpicks and they all fly up and stick in your face.
-Jack Handey
The tiger can’t change his spots. No, wait, he did! Good for him!
-Jack Handey
If you were a pirate, you know what would be the one thing that would really make you mad? Treasure chests with no handles. How the hell are you supposed to carry it?!
-Jack Handey
If I could be any kind of dog, I think I’d be one of those little yappy dogs, because while you’re sitting there on the couch trying to sound real smart, I’m just sitting there, yapping away. Just yappin’ and yappin’, and there’s nothing you can do about it, because I live here.
-Jack Handey
If you make ships in a bottle, I bet the thing that really makes your heart sink is when you look in and there at the wheel is Captain Termite.
-Jack Handey
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I don’t even pretend to know what all the questions are. Hey, where am I?
-Jack Handey
"What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position.''‹Quoted by Molly Ivins, the San Francisco
—George W Bush Chronicle, Jan. 21, 2000 (Thanks to Toni L. Gould.)
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"
—George W Bush‹Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
Scientist for the Department of Health recently completed a study that suggest that men should consider reducing their BEER consumption. This is because they have discovered that beer contains an abundance of female hormones. They theorized that drinking BEER turns men into woman. To test this theory, they gave a six pack of BEER within a one hour period. Then, it was observed that 100% of the men gained weight, had to urinate frequently, talked excessively without making any sense, became overly emotional, couldn't drive properly, failed to think rationally, argued about nothing at all, and refused to apologize when they were WRONG.
No further testing is planned, but if there is I will Update you people.
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for
they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the
streets that they may be seen of men. Verily, I say unto you, They
have their reward.
"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has
shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father
which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly...”
—The Gospel according to St. Matthew, Chapter 6: 5-6
> What the hell does AFAIK mean?
It probably means the same thing in hell it does on the Internet, and
on the Internet, it means As Far As I Know.
— Kish
"Kibo has the genius of Brett Somers, the creativity of Lionel Fanthorpe, the zaniness of Jack Webb, the good looks of Garry Shandling, the elegance of Empress Carlotta, the career longevity of Jimmy Workman, the fan following of Joe Shlabotnik, and the cultrual obscurantism of Dennis Miller."
— Dennis Miller
"If I wanted you to know what I was thinking, I would have said it out loud"
—Al Bundy
"Neo, why would you take a red pill from a bald, crazy, black guy named
Morpheus, dressed in a black leather dress with sunglasses, in a dark
abandoned warehouse, who recruited you from the internet? You're not very
smart, are you?"
"When life hands you a lemon, pull out a gun and start shooting."
A Scene in the northern Atlantic:
Americans: We are a large warship of the U.S. navy. Divert your course now!!
Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
Ancient Goth: Someone trying to overthrow the Roman Empire.
Modern Goth : A vegan pretending to be a vampire.
"I'm not a satanist.
I'm a satinist.
I worship fabric.
One tiny typo and you're persecuted for generations.."
-someone
Time is not my friend, time is a relative.
"Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects
of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up
traffic jams." - Mary Ellen Kelly
"You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged.”
—Michael Shirley
As if God uses Spheres and has any Trait at a level less than, "I'm God, you punk-ass.”
—Justin Achilli
if you can stand on an alligator's back like it's a surfboard, then ride it around and pretend your on a surf board, well, you deserve a blow job.
"What cannot be imposed on an adult becomes a cowardly tyranny
when it is imposed on a child"
If a kid ever asks you how Santa Claus can live forever, I think a good answer is that he drinks blood.
— Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey ©
I bet one of Dracula's least favorite games is croquet, and not just because of the wooden stakes. It just doesn't move fast enough for him.
— Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey ©
Probably for a robot, the scariest thing isn't a ghost, because they wouldn't know what one was. The scariest thing would be Robot Dracula.
— Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey ©
Vampires are make-believe... like elves, gremlins and Eskimos.
— Homer Simpson,The Simpsons ©
Happy Thanksgiving!
And if you are not in the US, Happy Thursday!
10 Reasons Beer is better than Jesus:
10. No one will kill you for not drinking beer.
9. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.
8. Beer has never caused a major war.
7. They don't force Beer on minors who can't think for themselves.
6. When you have a Beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.
5. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or torchured for his brand of Beer.
4. You don't have to wait 2000+ years for a second Beer.
3. There are laws saying Beer labels can't lie to you.
2.You can prove you have a Beer.
1. If you've devoted your life to Beer, there are groups to help you stop.
Thank GOD I’m an atheist.
The Christian Right is neither.
Jesus Saves! By using double coupons and shopping wisely.
If You’re Born Again, Do you have 2 Belly Buttons?
Don’t Pray in my School,
And I won’t think in your Church.
I Support the theory of evolution,
And they can have my opposable thumb
When they pry it from my cold dead hand.
If going to Church makes you Christian, does going to the garage make you a car?
If you want a country ran by religion, move to Iran.
The media are only as liberal as the conservative businessmen who own them.
While never having invented a sin, I’m still trying to perfect several.
"Outside of a dog, mans best friend is a book. Inside of a dog it's just to dark to read."
-Mark Twain
Fight until Hell freezes over. Then fight on the ice.
"All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the
politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher."
-Lucretius
Power through obscurity.
“You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth! No truth handler you! Bah, I deride your truth handling abilities!”
—Robert Terwilliger, Springfield Electoral Fraud Hearing
No matter how good he looks, some other girl is sick and tired of putting up with his crap.
Misogyny – hatred of women.
Misandry – hatred of men
Vae victus – woe to the living
You know in your heart that nothing's really wrong with you. However, your heart is just a muscle. You "know" things with your brain.
Your belief that laughter is the best medicine will be altered forever when you discover penicillin.
You might have tons of emotional problems, but loving too much isn't one of them.
Your attempts to lighten the mood by organizing a little sing-along are not appreciated by anyone else in the smoke-filled cockpit.
Despite your belief that you are basically a decent person, you will find yourself saying, "It's not you, it's me."
Words can't describe the things that will happen to you this week. Fortunately, the mathematics of nuclear fusion can.
"Drinking problem? I don't have a fucking drinking problem. I drink, I get drunk, I get in my car and I hit things, what's the fucking problem?"
"Roleplaying is an escapist activity that requires a good imagination, but it is not recommended for those with a poor grip on reality. It does not make weirdos, it simply attracts them." - rec.games.frp.* FAQ
Atheists can express compassion more easily than believers because we are not confused by fatalism ("Whatever happens is God's will"), pessimism ("We deserve to suffer"), salvation ("Death is not the end"), retribution ("Justice will prevail in the afterlife"), magic ("Pray for help"), holy war ("Kill for God"), forgiveness ("I won't be held responsible for my mistakes"), or glory ("Suffering with Christ is an honor").
—Dan Barker, “For Goodness Sake”
Libra: (Sept. 23—Oct. 23)
Please stop telling your coworkers you've been "nailing" your new secretary. The polite term is "nailing love to."
Well, thanks to the Internet I'm now bored with sex.
-Fry, Futurama
No matter how you shake and dance the last drop always falls in your pants
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
–Mark Twain
You are entitled to your own opinions.
You are not entitled to your own facts.
— Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
OVER WORKED!
For a couple years I've been blaming it on lack of sleep and too much pressure from my job, but now I found out the real reason I'm tired because I'm overworked!
The population in this country is 237 million 104 million are retired. That leaves 133 million to do the work.
There are 85 million in school, which leaves 48 million to do the work.
Of this there are 29 million employed by the federal government, leaving 19 million to do the work.
2.8 million are in the Armed Forces, which leaves 16.2 million to do the work.
Take from the total the 14,800,000 people who work for State and City Governments and that leaves 1.4 million to do the work.
At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals, leaving 1,212,000 to do the work.
Now there are 1,211,998 people in prisons.
That leaves just two people to do the work. You and me.
And you're sitting at your computer reading jokes!
"Last year I couldn't even spell English Major and now I are one."
"Wherever a army hides in the House of Pain, I'll be there. Whenever an Amotep Gunner fails to turn off his flamethrower, Ill be there. Whenever the voices of a thousand outraged players cry out 'Can he DO that?', yes , I'll be there too. And I'll still be doing 4 damage."
-From "The Gripes of Wraith"
Virginity like bubble, one prick all gone.
Baseball is wrong, man with four balls cannot walk.
War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.
It takes many nails to build crib but one screw to fill it.
Crowded elevator smells different to midget.
"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."
-Mitch Ratliffe
"If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing."
-Anon
Sorry, Officer, I didn't realize my radar detector wasn't plugged in.
Sorry Officer, I was trying to keep up with traffic. Yes, I know there is no other car around, that's how far I am behind the other cars.
"To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs." — Aldous Huxley
Parasites count for 0.01% of your body weight
In the memo field of all your checks, write 'for sexual favors.'
When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to
each other.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines.
Those of you who think you know everything are annoying those of us who do.
They call it "PMS" because "Mad Cow Disease" was already taken
Quod erat demonstradum = that which was to be shown.
i am not a pessimist. to perceve evil where it exsits is, in my opinion, a form of optimism." ~roberto rossellini an optimistic pessimist or a pessimistic optimist?
an autopsy?
no, not exactly; I just want to cut off her head and take out her heart.
``I'd be happy to stop contradicting you, Urza, just as soon as you start being right.'' - Bo Levar, planeswalker
"The only just use of power is in restraint."
In this "sacred" book of family scandals we find filth, sex orgies, cannibalism, atrocities, sex perversions, incest, bloody violence unparalleled in any other chronicle in all the literature of the world. Fortunately, not one-third of the human family has ever heard of the Christian Bible; not one-tenth of the Christians have ever read it, and no two who have read it agree as to its meaning. Won't you help get this book out of the hands of our children, out of decent homes, and out of hotel and motel rooms?
—Frank C. Hughes
“Every time someone supports a ruling, they claim it’s more realistic. Every time someone disagrees with the same ruling, they claim it’s less realistic. This says something very scary about the nature of reality.”
-Drake the Lesser
“When you’re no good at strategy, it helps to know the rules”
-Drake the Lesser
“You learn more from loosing than from winning, and I ‘ve learned more about fantasy wargaming than anyone I know”
-Drake the Lesser
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Please don’t blame my poor behavior on me; I have ADD. And SUBTRACT.
If I could live under water - I'd probably drown.
It's time to set yo' clock back bout as long as you can
I stop daylight and Ludacris the maintenance man
Get your oil changed, I check fluids and transmission
You one minute FOOLS, you wonder why y'all missin
On the back of milk cartons and there's no reward
No regards, close but it's no cigar
A hard head make a soft ass, but a hard dick make the sex last
I jump in pools and make a big splash
Water overflowin, so get your head right
It's all in yo' mind punk so keep your head tight
Enough with tips and advice and thangs
I'm big dog, havin women seein stripes and thangs
They go to sleep, start snorin, countin sheep and shit
They so wet, that they body start to leak and shit
Just cause I'm an ALL-nighter, shoot ALL fire
Ludacris, balance and rotate ALL tires
—Ludacris (from One Minute Man by Missy Elliot)
"even if the other demis did not participate in the ranged attack, were pushed, and/or were facing the wrong way, you'd still get the +2 damage from Magic Enhancement. With respect to special ability ruthlessness, Magic Enhancement is second only to Shockwave." —Drake The Lesser
“A lot of holes in the desert, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes. ‘Cept you gotta do it right; I mean you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise you’re talking about a half hour or fourty-five minutes of digging, and who knows who’s gonna be comin’ along in that time? Before you know it, you gotta dig a few more holes, you could be there all fuckin’ night.” – Nicky Santoro, from the movie Casino
Money. Power. Respect.
GET YOUR SELF UP!
You been knocked down? GET YOUR SELF UP!
You been shot down? GET YOUR SELF UP!
You been locked down? GET YOUR SELF UP!
GET YOUR SELF UP!
–KRS-One
Hoooo, Ho!
You’s a Ho! Ho!
You’s a Ho! Ho!
I said that you’s a Ho! Ho!
You’s a Ho! Ho!
You’s a Ho! Ho!
You’s a Ho! Ho!
I said that you’s a Ho! Ho!
You doin Ho-activities with Ho tendencies,
Ho’s are your friend’s, Ho’s are your enemies.
With Ho energy to do what you do,
Blew what you blew, screw what you screw,
Y’all professional Like DJ Clue, pullin on my coat tails.
Any why do you think you take a Ho to a Hotel?
Ho tell e’rybody, even the mayor,
Reach up in da sky for the Ho-zone layer,
Oh come on, playa, once a Ho always,
And Ho’s neva close they open like hallways,
Oh here’s a Ho’ cake for your Ho Ho crew,
And e’rybody want some, cause Ho’s gotta eat too!
Chorus
Can’t turn a Ho into a housewife; Ho’s don’t act right!
There’s Ho’s on a mission, and there’s Ho’s on a crackpipe!
Hey, Ho, how you doin? Where you been?
Prolly doin Ho-stuff, Cause there you Ho again!
It’s a Ho-wide world, that we livin in,
Feline, feminine ??even tactical?? women in
Not all, just some; you Ho who you are!
There’s Ho’s in the room, there’s Ho’s in the car!
There’s Ho’s on stage, there’s Ho’s by the bar!
Ho’s by near, and Ho’s by far!
Ho!
But can I get a ride?
No!
But come on nigga, why?
Cause you’s a Ho! Ho!
Chorus
You got a run in your panty-Ho’s,
Even your daddy knows,
That you suckin down chocolate like daddy-o’s
You Ho’s are Horrible, Horrendous,
On taxes I’m writin off Ho’s as dependants,
I see the Ho-rizon, It ain’t surprizin’
It’s just a Ho-asis, with ugly chick’s faces.
But Ho’s don’t feel so sad and blue,
Cause most of us niggas is Ho’s too!
Chorus
—Ludacris, from the song titled, appropriately enough, “Ho”
You meet assholes everyday, I just happen to be one of them
I don’t like cocaine, but I like the smell.
—Uncle Kracker
Quotes
| It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.Martin Luther King Jr.
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| —{{{2}}}
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| Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
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| —Michel de Montaigne
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| No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather.
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| —Michael Pritchard
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| In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
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| —F. Scott Fitzgerald
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| Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
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| —William Hazlitt
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| A waffle is a pancake with a syrup trap.
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| —Mitch Hedberg
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| It's like you're the dumbest person ever instead of just the dumbest person that I know.
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| —Kyle Mechler
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