10/08/2010

My favorite quotes (part 2)

This section of quotes is all (anti)-religious based.  If you will be offended, skip this one.


 "To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead." - Thomas Paine



“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”  - Stephen Roberts




"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." - Thomas Paine


"Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much." - Walter Lippmann



"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick


"I was forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief in every religion which had been taught to man. But my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity — not for a sect, or a party, or for a country or a colour — but for the human race, and with a real and ardent desire to do good." - Robert Owen


"I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit." - Mark Twain


"There are things about organized religion which I resent. Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace, but more blood has been shed in His name than any other figure in history. You show me one step forward in the name of religion and I'll show you a hundred retrogressions. Remember, they were men of God who destroyed the educational treasures at Alexandria, who perpetrated the Inquisition in Spain, who burned the witches at Salem. Over 25,000 organized religions flourish on this planet, but the followers of each think all the others are miserably misguided and probably evil as well."  - Frank Sinatra



"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."  - Carl Sagan.



"If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it — the life of that man is one long sin against mankind."
-W. K. Clifford


"There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination."
- Edmund Burke


"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
- Dennis Diderot


"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  - Arthur C. Clarke


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



"If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane."  - Robert Green Ingersoll


"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 blind-folded fear."  - Thomas Jefferson



"When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out." - Frank Sinatra


"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."  - Albert Einstein


"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."  - Steven Weinburg


"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

- Epicurus


"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw


"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." - Benjamin Franklin

10/07/2010

My favorite quotes (part 1)

This will be the first list of several pages worth of quotes that I have found and enjoyed.

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" - Isaac Asimov

 "You can change perceptions: Reality won't budge." - Geddy Lee

"Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears." - Marcus Aurelius


"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." - William Hazlitt


"War does not determine who is right - only who is left." - Bertrand Russell


"True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it." - Karl Popper


"He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life."  - Muhammad Ali


"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." - Dr. Seuss
 
 
"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." - Buddha
 
 
 
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." - Aldous Huxley
 
 
"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
 - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
- Thomas Jefferson


"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."  - Albert Einstein


"A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have."  - Barry Goldwater


"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."  - Winston Churchill


"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."  - Robert Frost


"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle


"Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants."
- John W. Gardner


"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!"  - Albert Einstein


"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."  Joseph Stalin


"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." - Thomas Jefferson


"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto." - Thomas Jefferson


"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." - John F. Kennedy


"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Frankin


"Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out." - Benjamin Franklin


"Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good." - Benjamin Franklin


"Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other." - Benjamin Franklin
(AKA, learn from others mistakes)


"It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them." - Benjamin Franklin


"Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it." - Benjamin Franklin


"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson


"An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." - Orlando A. Battista


"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln


"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein


"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." - Thomas Jefferson