"This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
-- George Bernard Shaw "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
-- Arthur C. Clarke "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison."
-- Henry David Thoreau "People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one."
-- Leo J. Burke "A single moment of understanding can flood a whole life with meaning."
-- Unknown "Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs."
-- Denis Diderot "I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."
-- Solomon Short "It seems that she's addicted to you in a certain sense."
-- Amarao, Furi Kuri "Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate."
-- F.M. Knowles "Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'."
-- Michael McClary "...a seemingly insignificant pawn can sometimes spoil the most elaborate checkmate"
-- Charles Solomon "The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it."
-- Warren Buffett "What Microsoft is doing is targeting specific markets it wants to be in, copying the products of the leading companies as close as it legally can and giving them away through one means or another, usually by bundling it as part of one existing product. It's called the 'fast follower' strategy. Microsoft is not about innovation. It never has been, and everyone knows that."
-- Richard Shaffer, Technologic Partners "The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."
-- Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions (p. 215) "Energy is the glue that binds our society together."
-- Matt Simmons "Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying."
-- Fran Lebowitz "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. "If you believe in me, I'll believe in you."
-- Lewis Carrol, Through The Looking Glass "[I]f I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul."
-- Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir "Rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles."
-- Thomas Browne "Many people lose their tempers merely from seeing you keep yours."
-- Frank Moore Colby "The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind."
-- Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, XIX "The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy."
-- Alfred North Whitehead "A man's own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health."
-- Francis Bacon "...a child may be made to believe a falsehood and die in support of it, and therefore there can be no merit in a [mere] belief. We find in the various sects of Christendom, among the Jews, Mohammedans, Hindoos, in fact, throughout the entire world, that children are made to believe in the creed in which they are brought up....
Bibles are always written so obscure as to require priestly interpreters... [whose] means of salvation is to strangle every one they come in contact with who does not believe as they do; and the more Infidels and heretics they strangle the surer their reward in heaven, and the most pious and conscientious among them try to bring out the most human sacrifices."
-- Ernestine L. Rose, as quoted in American Life (p. 107) by Carol A. Kolmerten "Years of love have been forgot / In the hatred of a minute."
-- Edgar Allan Poe, "To ---" "If you wish to taste the ground, feel free to attack me."
-- Kenshin Himura, Rurouni Kenshin "But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
-- W.B. Yeats, "He Wishes For The Clothes of Heaven" "I bring you with reverent Hands
The books of my numberless dreams..."
-- W.B. Yeats, "A Poet To His Beloved" "A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience."
-- Miguel de Cervantes "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
-- Isaac Asimov "Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door."
-- Sebastian Roch Nicholas "Christmas is a sentient wallet-smashing entity."
-- Brad Johnson "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-- Martin Luther King Jr. "For every action there is an equal and opposite government program."
-- Bob Wells "Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow."
-- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
-- Martin Luther King Jr., "I Have a Dream" "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
-- Isaac Asimov "The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas."
-- Whitney Griswold "Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
-- Isaac Asimov "I am the Black Mage! I am the one who makes the peoples fall down!"
-- Black Mage, 8-Bit Theater "What kind of spiritual philosophy is process-of-elimination? Are you kidding me? What do you look like telling someone that 'You have nothing to lose!' You know? It's like, '6 months no payments! No risk! No obligation! Buy Jesus now!' That, to me, is pathetic, and I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry. I can't apologize for calling out something that poor."
-- Karim Temple "One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
-- Elbert Hubbard "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
-- Batty, Blade Runner "A rocket will never be able to leave the earth's atmosphere."
-- The New York Times (1936) "Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race."
-- Albert Einstein "Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."
-- James M. Barrie, rectorial address, St. Andrew’s University, Scotland (3 May 1922) "I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education."
-- Wilson Mizner (1876 - 1933) "Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence."
-- Henrik Tikkanen "Experience is not what happens to a man. It's what a man does with what happens to him."
-- Aldous Huxley "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
-- John Lennon (1941 - 1980), Beautiful Boy "I personally don't bother with them, because it's like a science teacher arguing with a creationist. You may be smarter, and much better-educated, and more knowledgeable, and more reasonable, but they stand smug against you with arms folded because they substitute sheer arrogance for all of those things and think that it will suffice. And in their own eyes, it does. If you got a reasonably impartial third-party to watch, he would agree with you, but arguing with the child in his own house is a complete waste of time."
-- Michael Wong "Never be normal!"
-- Ron, Kim Possible "To learn and not think over what you have learned is perfectly useless. To think without having learned is dangerous."
-- Gore Vidal "Be careful, Preston. You're treading on my dreams."
-- DuPont, Equilibrium "To feel. 'Cause you've never done it, you can never know it. But it's as vital as breath. And without it, without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock... ticking."
-- Mary, Equilibrium "I expect to pass through the world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness I can show to any creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer it, for I shall not pass this way again."
-- Stephen Grellet "Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct."
-- Thomas Carlyle "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
-- Aesop, "The Lion and the Mouse" "You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Compassion is like a springwater coming up from the ground, and it can be used to sustain everyone."
-- Dainin Katagiri "The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history."
-- Carl Rowan "Let them hate so long as they fear."
-- Lucius Accius "Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody."
-- Franklin P. Adams, "Nods and Becks" (1944), p. 206 "All experience is an arch to build upon."
-- Henry Brooks Adams, "The Education of Henry Adams" (1907), ch. 6 "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."
-- Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) "He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god."
-- Aristotle "The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
-- Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later "Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
-- Winston Churchill "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
-- Mark Twain, attributed, Everyone's Mark Twain, p. 553, ed. Caroline Thomas Harnsberger "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
-- Plato "Windows 98 should have been released for free on Jan. 1, 1996 and titled Windows 95.1. If this were Hollywood, then Windows 98 would be the equivalent of 'Heaven's Gate', 'Waterworld' and 'Godzilla' rolled into one. A huge, overhyped, bloated, embarrassment."
-- Jesse Berst, ZDNet "It's more than a game. It's an institution."
-- Thomas Hughes "Chastity -- the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions."
-- Aldous Huxley "Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men."
-- T.H. Huxley "Oh, I'm a child am I, Lois? Well if I'm a child, do you know what that makes you? A pedophile. And I'll be damned if I'm gonna stand here and be lectured by a pervert."
-- Peter Griffin, Family Guy "We think in generalities, but we live in detail."
-- Alfred North Whitehead "It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties."
-- Alfred North Whitehead "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four "And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself."
-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four "There is no escape -- we pay for the violence of our ancestors."
-- "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future."
-- "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual."
-- "Muad'Dib: The Ninety-Nine Wonders of the Universe" by Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him."
-- "The Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual."
-- "Words of Muad'dib" by Princes Irulan, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "As with all priests, you learned early to call the truth heresy."
-- Death Cell Interview with Bronso of IX, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
-- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, in Dune by Frank Herbert "If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves..."
-- Thomas Edison "I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing..."
-- Thomas Edison "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
-- Thomas Edison "The only time I really become discouraged is when I think of all the things I would like to do and the little time I have in which to do them."
-- Thomas Edison "What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes!"
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) "Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins... and you will have sins in abundance."
-- Thomas Paine "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned."
-- Buddha "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte "Anger is a tool, like a razor edged sword. Its not to be wielded bluntly like a mace."
-- Daeraug Van`Perce "When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"
-- Sydney Harris "A true writer writes, not because he wants to, but because he can’t help it."
-- R.A. Salvatore "This is the greatest tragedy; the illiterate, uneduacted masses are so sure and certain of themselves and the educated, literate ones are so full of doubt"
-- Bertrand Russell "The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth."
-- Bertrand Russell, "A Debate on the Existence of God" (1948) in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 136. "The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."
-- Arthur C. Clarke "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
-- Francis Bellamy (1885-1931). Mr. Bellamy was a socialist, Baptist minister, and he created this original pledge before it was altered several times. "I've got black magic, a hair trigger, and a short fuse. Bring it!"
-- Black Mage, Episode 036: "Survivor 8-bit Style", 8-Bit Theater "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-- Proverb (Italian) "She touched the bricks of Widener Library, the glass cases in the Peabody Museum, as if they were the grail. She had never been particularly sensitive to myth or drama; the anguish of Juliet seemed to her artificial, that of Willy Loman merely wasteful. Only King Arthur, struggling to create a better social order, had interested her. But now, walking under the huge autumn trees, she suddenly caught a glimpse of a force that could span generations, fortunes left to endow learning and achievement the benefactors would never see, individual effort spanning and shaping centuries to come. She stopped, and looked at the sky through the leaves, at the buildings solid with purpose."
-- Nancy Kress, Beggars in Spain "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
-- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine (9 November 1930); also used in the obituary in New York Times (19 April 1955) "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
-- Abraham Lincoln "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."
-- Abraham Lincoln "I just love the smell of C4 in the morning."
-- Ling Ling, 3x3 eyes "It's disgusting how Microsoft portrays itself as the supreme innovator when just about all the technology that it has was copied off of others' previous work."
-- Timothy W Macinta "During Microsoft's 1999 anti-trust trial there were reports of Microsoft encouraging its employees to post messages in public forums stating that 'Microsoft is responsible for all good things in computerdom' and that 'The government has no right to prevent MS from doing anything. Period.' It's pretty sad when the only people you can get to support you are those that depend upon you for their daily sustenance."
-- Timothy W Macinta "Did you realize that a 486 is still a very useable computer if you put an operating system besides Windows on it?"
-- Timothy W Macinta "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, The Age of Reason (Part 1) "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires."
-- Susan B. Anthony, in a speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1896) "Someday I will be queen, but I will always be myself."
-- Garnet Til Alexandros 17th, Final Fantasy IX "On slang: The Internet is supposed to be about the transfer of ideas and information. Let’s try and make sure our ideas are legible."
-- Brad Johnson "If you're not mature enough to walk into a pharamacy and buy condoms, or deal with the shitstorm that will occur if your parents find out, you shouldn't be having sex."
-- Brad Johnson "Our All is at Stake, & the little Conveniencys & Comforts of Life, when set in Competition with our Liberty, ought to be rejected not with Reluctance but with Pleasure."
-- George Mason, letter to George Washington about Virginia's nonimportation associations, April 5, 1769. Robert A.Rutland, The Papers of George Mason (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), 1:99. "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."
-- epitaph of Leonard P. Matlovich (1988) "You could move."
-- Abigail Van Buren, "Dear Abby," in response to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-- Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (1973) "I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."
-- George Carlin "I've begun worshipping the Sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the Sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate."
-- George Carlin, You Are All Diseased "I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.
-- George Carlin "Straight Americans need... an education of the heart and soul. They must understand -- to begin with -- how it can feel to spend years denying your own deepest truths, to sit silently through classes, meals, and church services while people you love toss off remarks that brutalize your soul."
-- Bruce Bawer "About a year ago I was a guest on a network news show in New York. They were showing film clips from a gay pride parade down Fifth Avenue, but they only decided to show the part with men in dresses and heels. I had seen the parade, and there were men in business suits as well. After showing the film, the newsperson made some comments, and I found the comments extremely offensive. 'This is what's wrong with the media,' I said. 'You show a fringe position. You show one point of view. You're closing the minds of the people by not showing them what the reality is.' I got up and walked out, and I've never been asked back again."
-- Kathleen Nolan "Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
-- Harvey Fierstein "What luck for the rulers that men do not think."
-- Adolph Hitler "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority."
-- Ralph W. Sockman "One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings."
-- Franklin Thomas "I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."
-- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) "Racism is man's gravest threat to man -- the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason."
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel "The Dalai Lama visited the White House and told the President that he could teach him to find a higher state of consciousness. Then after talking to Bush for a few minutes, he said, 'You know what? Let's just grab lunch.'"
-- Bill Maher "For the whole Earth is the Sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on Stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives."
-- Pericles, as quoted in A Brief and True report concerning Williamsburg in Virginia by Rutherford Goodwin (1941), p. 125 "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
-- Mark Twain "All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire."
-- Aristotle "Beware of one who has nothing to lose."
-- Proverb (Italian) "Instead of seeing the rug being pulled from under us, we can learn to dance on a shifting carpet."
-- Thomas Crum "As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it."
-- Dick Cavett "Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, till we can clear these ambiguities."
-- William Shakespeare "Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps."
-- Emo Phillips "I pretty much try to stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face."
-- Johnny Depp "I fondly hope I'm beginning to misconstrue you."
-- Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning "Liberty means responsibility. That's why most men dread it."
-- George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists: Liberty and Equality", Man and Superman "A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety."
-- Aesop "I discovered I scream the same way whether I'm about to be devoured by a Great White or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot."
-- Kevin James "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time; / And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle, / Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing."
-- William Shakespeare, Macbeth "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
-- M. Kathleen Casey "Like a parasite that fails to realize its welfare would be enhanced by cooperating with rather than killing its host, humanity is overwhelming earth's life support systems."
-- Carl May "He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."
-- Saki (1870 - 1916) (H. H. Munro) "Wise men don't need advice. Fools don't take it."
-- Benjamin Franklin "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
-- Voltaire, letter to Frederick the Great, April 6, 1767; from George Seldes' The Great Quotations, 1983, p. 713 "Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work."
-- Gallagher "After the smoke clears and the bullshit settles, all of the whining about Christmas boils down to one thing: people who are trying to change the way other people celebrate Christmas. That's why some people get pissed off at Hallmark cards that say 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas'. No one's stopping them from calling it 'Christmas', but it actually offends them that some people choose to call it something else. And look at the way they get upset when they can't put Nativity scenes on government property, so they run screaming to the media every fucking year. Hey listen, if you're a Christian and you like nativity scenes, good for you. Put one in your living room. Put one in your church. Hell, put one on your front lawn for all I care. But noooooo, that's not enough, is it? Oh no, you're being 'oppressed' if you can't put it on somebody else's property too! Well, cry me a fucking river. I guess 'religious freedom' means 'I get to run around putting my religious stuff on other peoples' property' now, eh?"
-- Michael Wong, "Christmas Whiners" "When is someone going to institute the death penalty for telemarketing? Call your local government representative, and ask them to get on it."
-- Michael Wong "Where the preamble [of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom] declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting the words 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, 'A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;' the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363 "The only way anyone could 'prove' a quote is inaccurate is by having a complete, verified transcript of everything a person ever said or wrote -- a practical impossibility. But that doesn't mean we should accept every quote anyone attributes to someone famous. As rationalists, our only reasonable course when provided with a quote (no matter whose side it supports) is to ask critical questions. Is it consistent with other things we know the person wrote or said? Is there any specific written evidence from a primary source for the quote? If so, is the context in which it is found consistent with the apparent meaning of the quote?"
-- Ed Buckner "For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us."
-- Donald Williams "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof."
-- Ashley Montague "Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
-- Oscar Wilde "...the nature of debate is: 'I disagree with your position; this is why', not 'I refuse to even say whether I disagree with your position, but I see an opportunity to attack your personal conduct'."
-- Michael Wong "The best argument against democracy is a 5-minute conversation with the average voter."
-- Winston Churchill "My soul has insufficiet Awesomeness Recognition RAM to fully comprehend that image."
-- Brad Johnson "Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?"
-- Spike Milligan, The Goon Show "The key that is used does not rust."
-- Proverb (Albanian) "I think God is probably the most boring topic... ever. I get dizzy from all the circles."
-- Karim Temple, re: "Existence of God/Supreme Being" "Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."
-- Unknown "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."
-- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, Act III "And why should we, of all people, expect the proud new developing nations to see the world precisely as we see it? Was any new nation ever more outspoken, independent and unaligned than the young America of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln?"
-- Chester Bowles, The Conscience of a Liberal (page 256) "To some extent we are all the prisoneers of stereotypes; we see each other in terms of distorted and oversimplified images. Better communication in the realm of ideas, of the arts, and of science can help refashion these false images. And by seeing more clearly we may act more wisely."
-- Chester Bowles, The Conscience of a Liberal (page 255) "We all declare for liberty; but in using the word we do not all mean the same thing."
-- Abraham Lincoln "[My] deep religiosity... found an abrupt ending at the age of twelve, through the reading of popular scientific books."
-- Albert Einstein, Einstein, History, and Other Passions (page 172) "In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."
-- Mark Twain "Teaching and imparting of knowledge make sense in an unchanging environment... But if there is one truth about modern man it is that he lives in an environment that is continually changing. The only man who is educated is the man who has learned how to learn ... how to adapt and change ... who has learned that no knowledge is secure, that only the process of seeking knowledge gives a basis for security."
-- Carl Rogers "The great end in religious instruction, is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs; not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision; not to burden memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought"
-- William Channing, A Chosen Faith (page 30) "The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'"
-- Robert G. Ingersoll "The biblical concepts of sin and salvation are an integral part of Christian doctrine. Christianity first creates a problem (sin) and then offers a 'solution' (salvation). This is not unlike the protection racket; you either buy 'protection' -- or else!"
-- Rev. Donald Morgan Speedy: "May the best man win!"
Robin: "I intend to."
-- Teen Titans "No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals."
-- from The Tleilaxu Godbuk, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt "In creating moral retards, religion is steeped in pathology, coping with a populace of ethical degenerates: its victims. The 'faithful,' or the 'flock,' are what religion is designed to create and to cope with, i.e., with an immoral mass that acknowledges the religion's superiority and power; that is inherently wayward, but continuously deferential."
-- Richard G. Rieben, Ethics for Earthlings (page 26) [the Teen Titans arrive back at the Tower. Starfire bursts through the door, gleeful]
"Come, Friends. I shall thank you all by reciting the Poem of Gratitude. All six thousand verses."
[the Titans look shocked]
-- Starfire, Teen Titans "Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds."
-- John Perry Barlow "Such a rich store of myths enfolds Paul Muad'dib, the Mentat Emperor, and his sister, Alia, it is difficult to see the real persons behind these veils. But there were, after all, a man born Paul Atreides and a woman born Alia. Their flesh was subject to space and time. And even though their oracular powers placed them beyond the usual limits of time and space, they came from human stock. They experienced real events which left real traces upon a real universe. To understand them, it must be seen that their catastrophe was the catastrophe of all mankind. This work is dedicated, then, not to Muad'dib or his sister, but to their heirs -- to all of us."
-- Dedication in the Muad'dib Concordance as copied from The Tabla Memorium of the Mahdi Spirit Cult, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology."
-- Carl Sagan "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
-- Alfred North Whitehead "The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force."
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau "In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion."
-- Carl Sagan Interviewer: "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?"
Druyan: "He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know."
-- Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's wife) "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-- George Santayana "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
-- George Santayana "The United States furnishes the first example in history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control of religion."
-- Philip Schaff, Church and State in the United States "To free a man from error is to give, not take away."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer "Empirical thinking leads to a basically objective view of the world, belief leads to a view of the world in which the distinction between objective and subjective is blurred.... Thus, cause is apt to be mistaken for effect, the wish confused with its fulfillment, the symbol with the thing."
-- George Serban, M.D., The Tyranny Of Magical Thinking "Many of your Earth ways are still strange to me, but that was... just plain freaky, correct?"
-- Starfire, Teen Titans "So, of course, Gish's presentation was well received, which it would have been the case had he only gotten up and said 'praise the Lord' and sat back down."
-- Michael Shermer, describing "Young-Earth" Creationist Duane T. Gish's last debate of his career (which was against Shermer), in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 3, 2001, quoted from E-Skeptic for June 3, 2001 "The evening was very professionally organized, and most of the people were exceptionally polite (and in an odd way too polite, as if they don't trust themselves), although it did make me a little nervous when one church official told me after the debate when a big crowd of people surrounded me that he had assigned me a body guard (some big guy was standing there next to me) 'just in case.' Just in case what? I thought Christians were suppose to be exceptionally tolerant. Well, in any case, I guess I was grateful for the gesture, 'just in case.'"
-- Michael Shermer, describing "Young-Earth" Creationist Duane T. Gish's last debate of his career (which was against Shermer), in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 3, 2001, quoted from E-Skeptic for June 3, 2001 "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."
-- Herbert Spencer "Many people use the term 'theory' as a synonym for 'opinion.' However, in a science classroom, 'theory' means something very specific. A scientist formulates a hypothesis which may explain a phenomenon. He or she then tests the hypothesis through some means of experimentation or seeking supporting evidence. If the hypothesis passes the test, then it is tested again and again by other scientists to see if it passes it consistently. If the testing supports the hypothesis over and over, it becomes a theory. If it doesn't pass consistently, another hypothesis is sought. Sometimes, a better hypothesis comes along that explains more or better. In that case, the old theory is discarded and the new adopted.
"A theory should not only explain what has happened, but predict what will happen. Theories about the Earth's movement in the heavens, for example, accurately predict when the sun will rise. In science, a theory must be tested using empirical means. In other words, at some point, the scientist must be able to perceive evidence for the theory with normal human senses. Even then, the theory is not considered 'fact' unless it becomes somehow empirically observed. For instance, the theory that the earth is round can be 'proved' either by travelling all the way around it or by flying into space to look. Only then does it become fact.
In science, there are relatively few 'facts.'"
-- Morris Sullivan "I'm sorry I bit you...and pulled your hair...and punched you in the face..."
-- Lilo, Lilo & Stitch (2002) "I did not know that we had ever quarreled."
-- Henry David Thoreau, having been urged to make his peace with God "The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it."
-- Mark Twain, Notebook "And she disciplines me! She disciplines me real good... five times a day! With bricks! And a pillowcase..."
-- Lilo, Lilo & Stitch (2002) "A cult is a religion with no political power."
-- Tom Wolfe, In Our Time [Starfire, Cyborg and Robin are sitting at a picnic table]
Starfire: "This tangy yellow beverage is truly delightful."
Cyborg: "Uh, Starfire?"
Robin: "That's mustard."
Starfire: "Is there more?"
[Robin and Cyborg stare at her weirdly]
-- Teen Titans "You have a great name. He must kill your name before he kills you."
-- Juba, Gladiator (2000) "But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it."
-- Pericles' Funeral Oration, from Thudcydides' History of the Peloponnesian War "All humans share an entire realm of information, a whole dimension of existence that we create, and though it has no effect whatsoever on anything in the universe but us it still matters."
-- Karim Temple "If by 'wrong' you actually mean 'right perpetually on all matters in the universe,' then you are correct. Otherwise, I mourn for you and your wrongness."
-- Brad Johnson "There are two things you don't want to see being made -- sausage and legislation."
-- Otto von Bismarck "Advance in science comes by laying brick upon brick, not by sudden erection of fairy palaces."
-- J. S. Huxley "In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government."
-- David Hume, Essay 9: "Of The Parties of Great Britain", Essays Moral, Political, Literary "So I said to the officer, 'Officer, I thought she was 18.'
And he said, 'I don't care how old you thought she was, you're not supposed to stab people in the face.'"
-- Unknown "Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250"
-- Harper's Index (Oct. 1989) "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
-- Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy "A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
-- Albert Einstein "Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up."
-- Robert Frost "Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died."
-- Erma Bombeck "Never judge a book by its movie."
-- J. W. Eagan "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
-- Pericles "Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below."
-- John Dryden "Ill habits gather unseen degrees -- as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas."
-- John Dryden "Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for."
-- Socrates "I will be as harsh as truth, and uncompromising as justice... I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard."
-- William Lloyd Garrison "Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests."
-- Isaac Asimov "It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain."
-- Mark Twain "...shake off all the fears and servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. 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, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787 "Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge."
-- Robert Ingersoll "You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was."
-- Proverb (Irish) "An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep from falling off the earth."
-- Saying (Irish) "Wishes won't wash dishes."
-- Proverb (American) "...statues are so last millenium. I think a giant sketch of me scorched into the Earth's crust from a giant orbital laser cannon would be much more gratifying."
-- Alasdair Scott Pleakley: "I knew I forgot to add theft, endangerment to self, and insanity to my list of things to do today."
Dr. Jumba Jookiba: "You too?"
-- Lilo & Stitch "Force without wisdom falls of its own weight."
-- Horace "Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even."
-- Horace "One good turn desires another."
-- John Heywood (1497-1580) "Haste makes waste."
-- John Heywood (1497-1580) "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
-- John Heywood (1497-1580) "A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
-- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
-- William Shakespeare, The Merchant Of Venice "How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!"
-- William Shakespeare, As You Like It "He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave."
-- William Drummond (1585-1649) "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
-- Richard Steele (1672-1729) "I hope this wound manifests physically, becomes infected, and condemns you to a hospital bed."
-- Brad Johnson "As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) "Nurture your mind with great thoughts."
-- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) "Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory."
-- G. Behn "When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters -- one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity"
-- Saul David Alinsky "Beware the Fury of a Patient Man."
-- John Dryden, "Absalom and Achitophel" (1681) "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid"
-- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855) "I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
-- Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Sherlock Holmes "A great many people think they are thinking when they are actually rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James (1842-1910) "Ideas are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny."
-- Carl Schurz (1829-1906) "His ignorance is encyclopedic"
-- Abba Eban (1915 - 2002) "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world"
-- Unknown "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being"
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Sometimes the perfect person for you is the one you least expect"
-- Unknown "Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'"
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner."
-- Unknown "[T]he concept of possibility is not very helpful in historical matters. Endless historical scenarios can be concocted, and virtually all of them are possible, even the weirdest and most fantastic. That's why to say that a certain scenario is possible almost always is to say nothing about it at all.

...But it's crucial to make the distinction between possibility and probability because very different criteria apply in each case. To be historically possible, something only needs to be imaginable. However, for something to be historically probable means that there is some evidence for it. Not everyone in the historical Jesus discussion seems aware of this distinction, for we often read statements like 'Isn't it possible that Jesus...?' Fill in the blank with any scenario you like, no matter how you like: the answer will always be yes."
-- Robert Miller "...the greatest advances in civil rights and civic moral consciousness in human history occurred precisely as the result not of obeying, but of disobeying this very commandment [to honor our parents]: the social revolutions of the sixties, naturally abhorred by conservatives and yet spearheaded by rebellious teenagers and young adults, nevertheless secured the moral rights of women and minorities--something unprecedented in human history--and by opposing the Vietnam war, our children displayed for the first time a massive popular movement in defense of the very pacifism which Christians boast of having introduced into the world, yet are usually the last to actually stand up for. It can even be said that our entire moral ethos is one of thinking for ourselves, of rebellion and moral autonomy, of daring to stand up against even our elders when our conscience compels it."
-- Richard Carrier, "The Real Ten Commandments" "It is clear then, that if anyone's commandments ought to be posted on school and courthouse walls, it should be Solon's. He has more right as the founder of our civic ideals, and as a more profound and almost modern moral thinker. His commandments are more befitting our civil society, more representative of what we really believe and what we cherish in our laws and economy. And indeed, in the end, they are essentially secular. Is it an accident that when Solon's ideals reigned, there grew democracies and civil rights, and ideals we now consider fundamental to modern Western society, yet when the ideals of Moses replaced them, we had a thousand years of oppression, darkness, and tyranny? Is it coincidence that when the ideals of Moses were replaced with those of Solon, when men decided to fight and die not for the Ten Commandments but for the resurrection of Athenian civil society, we ended up with the great Democratic Revolutions and the social and legal structures that we now take for granted as the height and glory of human achievement and moral goodness? I think we owe our thanks to Solon. Moses did nothing for us--his laws were neither original nor significant in comparison. When people cry for the hanging of the Ten Commandments of Moses on school and court walls, I am astonished. Solon's Ten Commandments have far more right to hang in those places than those of Moses. The Athenian's Commandments are far more noble and profound, and far more appropriate to a free society. Who would have guessed this of a pagan? Maybe everyone of sense."
-- Richard Carrier, "The Real Ten Commandments" "The good judge others by their character, not their beliefs, and punish deeds, not thoughts, and punish only to teach, not to torture."
-- Richard Carrier, "From Taoist to Infidel" (2001) "The mere fact that consciousness exists, that some person exists who can see and know and create and manifest everything good for others and find happiness in living, is the most astounding thing of all. It does not matter if it is brief, for merely the opportunity itself is priceless and our being here, to acknowledge it, to study it, to know it, and to love it, gives the universe meaning."
-- Richard Carrier, "Our Meaning in Life" "A healthy mind in a healthy body, pursuing and manifesting what it loves, is the meaning of life."
-- Richard Carrier, "Our Meaning in Life" "Death is not an event in life... our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein "If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein "To live eternally is never for one moment to stop living an examined life."
-- James Still, "Death Is Not an Event in Life" "Happy the man, and happy he alone, / He who can call today his own; / He who, secure within, can say, / Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today."
-- John Dryden, Imitation of Horace, Book 3, Ode 29 (1685) "Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all."
-- Alexander The Great "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. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."
-- George Bernard Shaw "The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations."
-- George Santayana (1863-1952) "A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, 'Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?' holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. 'Yet,' added he, 'none of you can tell where it pinches me.'"
-- Plutarch, Parallel Lives "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-- Aristotle "I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."
-- Pastor Tony Campolo "The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war."
-- Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit "I’m totally feminine and girly, but in a dark, black lace kind of way."
-- Juliya Chernetsky (hostess of 'IMX' and 'Uranium' on Fuse) "I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues"
-- Duke Ellington "...we face a great moral challenge to make sure opportunity is an open door through which every citizen can pass not a revolving door which turns for some and doesn't budge for others."
-- Ted Kulongoski "Although no amount of contrition by politicians will ever sufficiently atone for the sins of their predecessors, blatant refusal to even acknowledge the magnitude of such crimes chillingly raises the possibility of the capacity to repeat them."
-- Michael Miyamoto, "Japan Should Teach Horrors of WWII", San Bernardino County Sun, Wednesday, April, 13, 2005 edition "Solace thy thirst in wisdom. / Succor thy mind in learning, / For riches of knowledge yearning. / Let truth be thy only kingdom."
-- Daniel F Mitchell "Wisdom is knowing that you don't know."
-- Socrates "Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond."
-- Jeffery Borenstein "The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it."
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. David Spitz, chapter 1, p. 14 (1975).
Originally published in 1859. "The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds."
-- Will Durant "I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous -- if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men."
-- Robert Ingersoll "Careful and correct use of language is a powerful aid to straight thinking, for putting into words precisely what we mean necessitates getting our own minds quite clear on what we mean."
-- William Ian Beardmore Beveridge "Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived."
-- Oscar Wilde "People aren't interested in facts. They want to see their side's spin on the facts rather than the facts themselves."
-- Michael Wong "The most valuable thing anyone can do when faced with someone who's being indoctrinated in any given viewpoint is to expose him to the other viewpoint. If the supporters of the first viewpoint think the only way to sell it is to keep him insulated from opposing viewpoints rather than being able to make a solid argument for it, then that says all you need to know about its fundamental weakness."
-- Michael Wong "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine."
-- J. B. S. Haldane "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? Whence then is evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
-- Epicurus "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-- Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1981) edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press "I choose to be a free man, with a free mind. You, on the other hand, throw away the greatest evolutionary gift of humanity, which is its capacity for free thought."
-- Michael Wong "You have allowed your critical thinking skills to wither on the vine. You accept your articles of religious faith blindly, without questioning and without thinking. That is what separates a mindless fundamentalist from an intelligent religious thinker. Your mind is slowly rotting away, and you don't even know it."
-- Michael Wong "None of what you have said so far is a debate. You ignore everything I say, you refuse to address my points individually, and you continually restate your proselytizing blurbs. I feel like I'm arguing with a sales brochure."
-- Michael Wong "What kind of unabashedly immoral, militaristic society does one live in, when any conceivable atrocity is deemed morally acceptable if it occurs in wartime or is sanctioned by a sufficiently powerful being?"
-- Michael Wong "Frankly, I think it's an act of shameful ingratitude for you to thank God for your survival, rather than the scientists and doctors who created the techniques and technologies that kept you alive."
-- Michael Wong "I got to write these jokes. So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that's funny. Or, If the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn't funny."
-- Mitch Hedberg "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful"
-- Anton LaVey "True friends stab you in the front."
-- Oscar Wilde "Twenty-five hundred years ago it took an exceptional man like Diogenes to exclaim, 'I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world.' Today we must all be struggling to make these words our own. We have come to the point in history when anyone who is only Japanese or American, only Oriental or Occidental, is only half- human. The other half that beats with the pulse of all humanity has yet to be born."
-- Houston Smith "Literature is news that stays news."
-- Ezra Pound "In heaven all the interesting people are missing."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "Facts are stubborn things"
-- John Adams "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."
-- Anatole France "For separate, perfect, and immovable
Images can break the solitude
Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes."
-- W.B. Yeats, "The Phases of the Moon" "Some people never admit they're wrong and continue to find new, and often mutually inconsistent, arguments to support their case ... others claim to have never supported the incorrect view in the first place or, if they did, it was only to show that it was inconsistent."
-- Stephen Hawking "Tell me something about this 'Salvation' of yours. Salvation implies a threat, correct? You must be saved from something. So who or what are we supposedly being saved from? God himself. What's the danger from which we need salvation? An eternity of agonizing torture, courtesy of a 'loving' God. Call it God, call it Jesus, call it the Holy Trinity or the Heavenly Host, but whatever the name, the result is the same: he's supposedly 'saving' us from himself.

"Quite frankly, salvation doesn't mean a whole lot when the person 'saving' you is the same person who's threatening you! The notion of Christian salvation is quite frankly the most incredibly audacious example of spin-doctoring in human history. If a mugger holds a gun to your head and says that out of his love for you, he will 'save' you from his own violence as long as you give him your money, would you think him wondrously merciful? Would you be glad you ran into him? Or would you think that he's a deranged, violent sociopath?"
-- Michael Wong "'Family' has always been the religious right's code-word for 'Christian Beliefs.' I'm now just as sick of that word as I am of 'freedom.'"
-- Damien Sorresso "[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
-- Charles Darwin, Introduction: The Descent of Man "Books, purchasable at a low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate -- with the best teachers -- the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses. Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society."
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark "This is the worst kind of discrimination. The kind against me!"
-- Bender, Futurama "Where there is doubt, there is freedom."
-- Proverb (Latin) "In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved..."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia "If society lets any considerable number of its members grow up as mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame."
-- John Stuart Mill "If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
-- Thomas Jefferson "There is a reason that churches want your children, and it's not because they've already fully developed their reasoning skills."
-- Michael Wong "Does the warmaster truly wish a disquisition upon the New Republic’s perverse system of government? It has to do with a bizarre concept called democracy, in which ruling power is given to whomever is most skillful at directing the herd instincts of the largest masses of their most ignorant citizens."
-- Nom Anor, Traitor "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations."
-- John von Neumann "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
-- Anais Nin "Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say that it's 'just' a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is 'just' a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally -- taking it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along."
-- David Quammen, "Was Darwin Wrong?", National Geographic "... Congress, in voting a plan for the government of the Western territories, retained a clause setting aside one section in each township for the support of public schools, while striking out the provision reserving a section for the support of religion. Commented Madison: 'How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment.'"
-- Richard B. Morris, Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, Harper & Row, 1973, p. 206. The Congress here referred to was the Continental Congress; the Madison quote is from his letter to James Monroe, May 29, 1785, according to Morris. The Madison being referred to is, of course, James Madison (1751-1836): Founding Father and 4th U.S. President "Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and the wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers."
-- Charles W. Eliot "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
-- George Bernard Shaw "Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have."
-- Louis E. Boone "Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them"
-- Washington Irving "Your biggest asset is rampant ignorance. You would never start a project if you knew how much it would really cost. Employees stay here because they don't know there are better jobs across the street. Customers buy your products because they don't know about all the bugs. I recommend wearing trash cans on your heads to avoid accidental exposure to knowledge."
-- Dogbert, Dilbert "Most important, nature is not constrained by any person's lack of imagination."
-- Mark Isaak, "Bombardier Beetles and the Argument of Design" "Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings."
-- H.L. Mencken "When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
-- John Muir "When it comes to religion, your opponent in a debate is often like a punching bag with a happy-face painted on it. No matter how many times you bash the fuck out of it, it will just come right back at you with that idiotic happy-face until you get tired and stop."
-- Michael Wong "You cannot convince the bigot. He is beyond convincing, he is immune to arguments. The idea of the argument is not to convince him, but to convince the fence-sitters who are watching from the sidelines."
-- Michael Wong "People arguing against Jefferson's wall of separation comment ignore the fact that it is a perfectly valid indicator of the intent behind the First Amendment. It may not be law itself, but it indicates the intent behind the law, and the intent behind the law is crucial when deciding how to interpret the wording of the law.

Moreover, they are fond of using Jefferson quotes in which he says good things about God. But there are many varieties of God, and deism was popular at the time in certain intellectual circles. At no point does Jefferson ever say that the Bible has a place in government. They are trying to act as though anything positive said about God must mean that the Bible has a place in government, when nothing could possibly be further from the truth of their intent. Their intent was clear: individuals may be answerable to God (not necessarily the Christian God, but 'Nature's God'), but the government must not be influenced by the clergy."
-- Michael Wong "Could you possibly use the grey matter your ancestors went to all that trouble to evolve for you?"
-- Martin Kemmish "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
-- Wilhelm Stekel "The gods favor the strong."
-- Tacitus "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
-- Herbert Spencer "Give someone a fish, you feed him for one day. Teach him how to fish, and you lose a steady customer."
-- The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition #207 "Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can't remember what they are."
-- Steven Wright "All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific."
-- Steven Wright "Excuse my proverbial French, but if I didn't ask you to create me, what the fuck do I have to thank you for?"
-- Karim Temple "One thing I find quite often is an uncommonly recognized common fault -- people always fail to ask the right questions. They ask the wrong questions, and then believe so fervently in their irrelevant answers."
-- Karim Temple "The truth of the abiotic genesis of life is strewn out before us by our heavenly mothers and fathers: the stars. Did you know that stars generate all of the basic elements we as organisms thrive on? Hydrogen abound, aged stars generate the oxygen that combines with it to create our precious water -- the blood, the soul, the amnion of all that is known to live. And carbon, the skeletal substance of the living world, comes from these big bright wonders which, interestingly enough, entirely fit the conventional definition of what it means for an entity to be alive. These unimaginably enormous things, these stars, many times explode when they die, firing these and many other building blocks of life across space. It's almost as if they're sacrificing their brilliance just for the chance for us to live. It's quite beautiful, actually."
-- Karim Temple "Sex is referred to as 'consummation' for a reason. In Biblical times, the act of sex was marriage itself; it really had nothing to do with any ceremonies and rings or contracts and pieces of paper. Real marriage is a committed relationship, not a traditional ceremony that you wait years to have. Having sex just because it feels good only serves to satiate a primordial desire in a person and accomplishes nothing. I don't judge people; I don't care for the weight of the gavel. But people care too much about what feels good as opposed to what is good. It's a tremendous immaturity that is fed and fueled by today's society. We're turning into nations of self-serving cavemen that can't even imagine a world bigger than they are, let alone being a part of it or being responsible for the fact that their actions have consequent repercussions in it. 'I want to have as much fun as I can have in life.' What children adults have become. It never occurs to people that maybe their own compulsions and pleasures are not the only thing there is to life."
-- Karim Temple "If a sign is useless, it is meaningless. That is the point of Occam's maxim."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein "The whole point of being an author and supposedly an expert on a field is to present the wheat from the chaff. If you're just lumping sources together without discrimination, then you're back to the problem that Richard Carrier talked about, the work becomes useless as a reference, since you have to repeat all the research of the person's book in order to find out what is right and what is wrong."
-- Mike Soileau "For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
-- Plato "There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions."
-- Douglas Adams, from an impromptu speech he gave at a Cambridge conference in 1998 "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
-- Benjamin Franklin "Authority is never without hate."
-- Euripides, Ion "I can't help but think that someday, some alien researcher is going to be picking over the bones of our civilization and saying to himself: 'stupid fuckers.'"
-- Michael Wong "Today we are being drowned in a rising tide of bullshit, where every promoter of a religious agenda insists he's actually working from non-religious motives. It could be creationism, anti-abortionism, anti-cloning, or any other religious issue of the week; no matter what it is, they always invent some thinly veiled pseudo-secular fake reason for their position."
-- Michael Wong "More of a Bible-thumper than George W. Bush himself? Were you figuring that he puts on Crusader armour and smites infidels on weekends?"
-- Michael Wong "The idea that scientists should base their conclusions upon popularity rather than scientific methods is so profoundly stupid that anyone seriously proposing it should be neutered to protect the gene pool."
-- Michael Wong "Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson."
-- from "The Humanity of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "Here lies a toppled god-- / His fall was not a small one. / We did but build his pedestal, / A narrow and tall one."
-- Tleilaxu epigram, in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "I give you the desert chameleon, whose ability to blend itself into the background tells you all you need to know about the roots of ecology and the foundations of a personal identity."
-- Book of Diatribes from the Hayt Chronicles, in Children of Dune by Frank Herbert "Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name? Whence comes your downward degeneration from the original revelation?"
-- Paul Atreides, in Children of Dune by Frank Herbert "All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
-- Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto), in Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert "When you think to take determination of your fate into your own hands, that is the moment you can be crushed. Be cautious. Allow for surprises. When we create, there are always other forces at work."
-- Darwi Odrade, in Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert "Discovery is dangerous... but so is life. A man unwilling to take risk is doomed never to learn, never to grow, never to live."
-- Pardot Kynes (Planetologist), in Dune: House Harkonnen by Brian Herbert "Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife -- chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'"
-- "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert "One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp with too much force is to be taken over by power, thus becoming its victim."
-- Bene Gesserit Axiom, in Children of Dune by Frank Herbert "Each human being is a time machine."
-- Zensunni Fire Poetry, in Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert "Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short."
-- Mentat Handbook, in Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert "Simplicity is the most difficult of all concepts."
-- Mentat Conundrum, in Dune: House Corrino by Brian Herbert "The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences."
-- Pardot Kynes, ecology of Bela Tegeuse, initial report to the imperium, in Dune: House Atreides by Brian Herbert "The space, the bench, and the lighting in this room are at least as pretty as anything on the walls."
-- Melissa Janssens "A man cannot drink from a mirage, but he can drown in it."
-- Fremen Wisdom, in Dune: House Corrino by Brian Herbert "The principal cause of belief in psychic phenomena is the inability of the average man to observe accurately and estimate the value of evidence, plus a bias in favor of the phenomena being real."
-- Douglas Blackburn, psychic hoaxer. "The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
"But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task ..."
-- Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium "Abraham Lincoln once said, 'The philosophy of the classroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next' (Martin, With God on Our Side, p. 92). The Religious Right has taken this to heart, and this is why they have led a massive assault on the public school system, trying to make the classroom their podium, from which they can indoctrinate the children of America with their beliefs, their morality, and with the 'science' that the universe was created in six days."
-- Yefim Galkine "'Analytical review' from whom? Politicians? Parents' groups? Church councils? Bureaucrats? Lobbyists?

Scientists have been doing legitimately qualified 'analytical review' of evolution for more than a hundred fucking years, and what they concluded should be taught in the goddamned classroom. Holy fuck, do I ever hate stupid assholes like this."
-- Michael Wong, responding to a thread at his forum by which the article titled "Ohio governor wants to 'criticize evolution'" is being discussed "Wit is educated insolence."
-- Aristotle "By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."
-- Socrates "In the end that's all we have: our memories -- electrochemical impulses stored in eight pounds of tissue the consistency of cold porridge. In the end they define our lives."
-- Remembrance of the Daleks (page 160) "It was only a small explosion. They couldn't understand how blowing up the art room was a creative act."
-- Ace, "Dragonfire", Doctor Who "Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: 'I feed on your energy.'"
-- Addenda to Orders in Council The Emperor Paul Muad'dib. in Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert "The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other."
-- Francis Bacon "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
-- Albert Einstein "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."
-- Martin Luther King Jr. "IDers think that evolution is false. They dress up their idiocy in voluminous bullfuckery, but the basic argument is identical to that of creationists: they believe evolution theory does not work. They just don't bother to name the invisible man in the sky who created the biosystem through unnamed, untestable, and indescribable mechanisms."
-- Michael Wong "That last sentence is wrong. One of the first things every child learns is a vague grasp of the law of gravity; those too stupid to figure out how it works become XTreme Sports fanatics and die an early death. Similarly, a lack of knowledge of what electricity is, or how corrosive chemicals tend to interact with the human body are all likely to end your life prematurely. So no, while someone can live without knowing anything about art or history, he MUST learn a few scientific concepts in order to survive, unless he gets through life on monstrous helpings of sheer dumb luck."
-- Michael Wong, responding to the last sentence in the post a member of his forum submitted, which says "Some humans are even able to live without knowing anything about science or art or history even..." (while in pain) "Organs... surrendering like... the French..."
-- Black Mage, 8-Bit Theater "Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot "It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works -- that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot "A scientific colleague tells me about a recent trip to the New Guinea highlands where she visited a stone age culture hardly contacted by Western civilization. They were ignorant of wristwatches, soft drinks, and frozen food. But they knew about Apollo 11. They knew that humans had walked on the Moon. They knew the names of Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins. They wanted to know who was visiting the Moon these days."
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (page 281) "It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas... If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you... On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones."
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism" (1987) "An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
-- Thomas Paine, "Dissertation on First Principles of Government" "...for what is the amount of all his prayers but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say: Thou knowest not so well as I."
-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (Part 1) "If you have studied history at all you should know that nothing is trivial in law, where precedent actually carries weight."
-- Michael Wong "Come on, don't bash the name. They have no choice but to call it 'quarter-life crisis', because 'arrested-adolescent twenty-something go-nowhere loser crisis' sounds too insulting."
-- Michael Wong "You know, all this politically correct bullshit pisses me off. Looks matter. Anyone who says they don't is lying. Period. It's human nature, and it's incredibly annoying when people deny that and tip-toe around it. Yes, we all know appearance isn't the most important thing ever, but pretending it's not important at all is ridiculous.

Why can't people stop being so full of shit all the time? Be reasonable."
-- Brad Johnson "If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins."
-- Benjamin Franklin "Golf is a good walk spoiled."
-- Mark Twain, in "Quotable Quotes", Reader's Digest, December 1948 "I love the way fundietards...think that tolerance of people is the same thing as tolerance of stupid ideas. When we say that tolerance is good, we mean that fundie idiots should let gay people live their lives and have the same rights as everyone else. When they say 'tolerance', they mean that people who want to criticize bad ideas should be silenced. What a bunch of asstards."
-- Michael Wong "Just as an experiment, you should post this article on a fundie webboard and stick 'By the way, I worship Satan' in the middle of it in order to see if any of them notice it. In my experience, most fundies, when confronted with an article like that, will skip over most of it because they don't really want to read it, and then they'll post a cookie-cutter response."
-- Michael Wong, responding to a thread at his forum containing an article the subtitle of which is the following: "Accepting 'intelligent design' in science classrooms would have disastrous consequences, warn Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne" "There comes a point where you must call a spade a spade"
-- Martin Kemmish "Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices -- just recognize them."
-- Edward R. Murrow "The company of just and righteous men is better than wealth and a rich estate."
-- Euripides, Aegeus, Frag. 7 "But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long."
-- Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Vol 1, Chapter 39) "How far that little candle throws its beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world."
-- William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, / To throw a perfume on the violet, / To smooth the ice, or add another hue / Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light / To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to / garnish, / Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess."
-- William Shakespeare, King John "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous / palaces, / The solemn temples, the great globe itself, / Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; / And, like this insubstatial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.
-- William Shakespeare, The Tempest "The common people will let it go. Oh yes, they’ll sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be led, sir, driven, pushed!"
-- Alexander, A Clockwork Orange "Yes, all religion is assumed to be righteous and good by default. Unless, of course, it involves spell-casting or something absurd like that. People chanting in a different language and performing rituals hoping to compel their gods to intervene in their lives? Clearly, any Christian would find that absurd."
-- Damien Sorresso "Forgive you? Of course I forgive you. That is your God's function. Your crime is forgiven. However, your stupidity requires a response."
-- Leto II, in God-Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
-- Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954) "In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that 'a man can do as he will, but not will as he will,' has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all, has its due place."
-- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (1931) "The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling."
-- Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954) "In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963) "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. "This syndrome might be different elsewhere, but it is the one thing that I truly fear; that public education is stifiling the creativity and ingenuity that a culture requires to survive. It resurfaces in college, but it often takes a great deal of effort to reawaken it and that effort could be better spent truly educating and not deconditioning."
-- Michael Schilling "Accepting claims at face value from a source which has proven reliable and objective time and time again throughout the course of history is different from accepting claims at face value from delusional men dressing up in white and spouting prayers."
-- Damien Sorresso "I more or less favor the decision-making process to exclude those who are not properly-informed enough to make a decision. Politicians studied political science and law in school, not science. These people are acting like scientists don't have any ethics at all, and that scientists need politicians and philosophers (in addition to the common dumbass) breathing down their necks about every fucking experiment.

No. Scientists have ethics boards. Let them make the final decision, with consideration, perhaps, to input from politicians and the general public."
-- Damien Sorresso "Faith -- what is this emotion but a desperate attempt to escape from mind-burning fear?"
-- David Zindell, The Broken God (page 424) "The brown book I carry says there is nothing stranger than to explore a city wholly different from all those one knows, since to do so is to explore a second and unsuspected self. I have found a thing stranger: to explore such a city only after one has lived in it for some time without learning anything of it."
-- Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor, Chapter II: "Upon the Cataract" "[R]esolution and a plan are better than a sword, because a man whets his own edges on them."
-- Gene Wolfe, The Citadel of the Autarch, Chapter XVII: "Ragnarok -- The Final Winter" "Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious."
-- George Bernard Shaw "The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language."
-- J. Michael Straczynski "Social advancement comes by being audacious, no matter what lies the 'Don't Rock The Boat' retards spoonfeed out."
-- Martin Kemmish "Realistically, if you can push something through and keep it around long enough, public opposition tends to wane. Look at Canadian public opinion polls about gay marriage taken before and after its passage; a solid majority of Canadians now say they don't want government to bother revisiting the issue, whereas before it was passed, it was a dicey proposition. Why? Obviously, because the sky hasn't fallen, and the doomsday screaming of the fundies is starting to sound like the hysterical alarmist bullshit that it is, even in the ears of religious people. So it is possible to actually lead a country rather than running it by opinion polls."
-- Michael Wong "Whenever you see someone saying that there's no morality without God, you know that he's a fundie. If he says that he's not a full-blown fundie, he's a liar."
-- Michael Wong "Love is a very powerful force. Even more so when it's focused into a coherent beam of destruction."
-- Black Mage, "8-bit Chronicles", 8-Bit Theater "Bait, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Destiny, n. "A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for failure."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Impossible is just a word people use to make themselves feel better when they quit."
-- Vyse, Skies of Arcadia "A man of abilities and character, of any sect whatever, may be admitted to any office of public trust under the United States."
-- Edmund Randolph, American founding father's address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 10, 1788, quoted in The Founders' Constitution, 1987, quoted from Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom "A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough"
-- the epitaph for Alexander The Great, the author of which is unknown "I've said it before and I'll say it again: fundies are so accustomed to 'preaching to the choir' that most of them honestly don't know how to do otherwise. That's why the most common reaction of a fundie to a skeptic is to look for an excuse to be 'offended'."
-- Michael Wong "If I saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be."
-- Thomas Robert Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population "The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle."
-- John Stuart Mill, "Civilization", London and Westminster Review (April 1836) "Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think."
-- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) "This is like the Iraqis officially writing 'Jews suck' into their constitution. Does it really surprise anyone?"
-- Damien Sorresso, commenting on article titled, "Vatican to bar homosexual priests: NYT" "Ultimately, this is not about science at all. This is about trying to keep scientists and their pesky conclusions under religious and political control, like it was in the good old days. Half a millennium ago. It's about religious people who are upset at scientists for pushing boundaries, ignoring their beliefs and concerns, etc. and who think those uppity scientists need to be put in their place."
-- Michael Wong, commenting on a thread by which the article titled "New evolution spat in U.S. schools goes to court" is being discussed "They're like the Japanese of alien races."
-- Jason Knupp "The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature ... [In] the formation of the American governments ... it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven ... These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."
-- John Adams, second President of the United States, quoted from A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1788 "Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

"We have solved ... the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries."
-- Thomas Jefferson, as quoted in the Letter to the Virginia Baptists (1808). This is his second use of the term "wall of separation," here quoting his own use in the Danbury Baptist letter. This wording was cited several times by the Supreme Court as an accurate description of the Establishment Clause: Reynolds (98 U.S. at 164, 1879); Everson (330 U.S. at 59, 1947); McCollum (333 U.S. at 232, 1948). "Instinct influences most human behaviour. We are capable of making rational choices that go against our instincts, but it's an open question how much that actually happens."
-- Michael Wong "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
-- Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (page 18) "Theistic evolution is 'God created a really clever way of making species develop by themselves. It's called evolution'. Intelligent design is 'evolution doesn't work; God, er ... I mean ... an intelligent designer must have done it ... somehow.'"
-- Michael Wong "Isn't it interesting, that if you take improper care with a weapon (say, by randomly firing shots from your new gun without bothering to check where the barrel is pointed), you can be brought up on criminal charges, but if you purchase a dog which is powerful enough to kill and you fail to take proper care to control and train it, you get nothing but a slap on the wrist?"
-- Michael Wong "[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
-- Thomas Jefferson, "Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom" (1779), quoted from Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Writings (1984), p. 347 "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In forming a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
-- James Madison, "Federalist No. 51" "Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1801 Inaugural Address "A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people."
-- James Madison, Constitutional Convention June 29, 1787 "Besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The establishment of the chaplainship in Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights as well as of Constitutional principles. The danger of silent accumulations and encroachments by ecclesiastical bodies has not sufficiently engaged attention in the U.S."
-- James Madison, being outvoted in the bill to establish the office of Congressional Chaplain, from the "Detached Memoranda" "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
-- The U.S. Constitution, Amendment I "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
-- The U.S. Constitution, Amendment X "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
-- The U.S. Constitution's Preamble "I came, I saw, I conquered."
-- Julius Caesar, written in a report to Rome 47 B.C. after conquering Farnakes at Zela in Asia Minor in just five days "Molon Labe!"
Translation: Come and get them!
-- Leonidas I, King of Sparta, ca.489BC - 480BC, in response to a demand from Xerxes I of Persia that the Spartan army lay down their arms, at the Battle of Thermopylae "Travelling, sick / My dreams roam / On a withered moor"
-- Matsuo Basho (1644 -- 1694), Japanese poet. Translation by Robert Hass. Note: Basho's death poem, written while he was dying of a stomach illness "An old pond; / A frog jumps in -- / The sound of water."
-- Matsuo Basho "One of the most grotesque instances of the stolen concept fallacy may be observed in the prevalent claim -- made by neo-mystics and old-fashioned mystics alike -- that the acceptance of reason rests ultimately on 'an act of faith.'

'Faith in reason' is a contradiction in terms. 'Faith' is a concept that possesses meaning only in contradistinction to reason. The concept of 'faith' cannot antecede reason, it cannot provide the grounds for the acceptance of reason -- it is the revolt against reason.

One will search in vain for a single instance of an attack on reason, on the senses, on the ontological status of the laws of logic, on the cognitive efficacy of man’s mind, that does not rest on the fallacy of the stolen concept.

The fallacy consists of the act of using a concept while ignoring, contradicting or denying the validity of the concepts on which it logically and genetically depends.

This fallacy must be recognized and repudiated by all thinkers, if truth and reality are their goal.

In the absence of such recognition and repudiation, the gates are left open to the most lethal form of mysticism -- the mysticism that postures as 'science.'"
-- Nathaniel Branden, "The Stolen Concept" "[The] manifest object of the men who framed the institution of this country, was to have a State without religion and a Church without politics--that is to say, they meant that one should never be used as an engine for the purposes of the other.... For that they built up a wall of complete partition between the two."
-- Jeremiah S. Black, noted constitutional advocate, Essays and Speeches, D. Appleton and Co., 1885. As quoted by Leo Pfeffer, "The Establishment Clause: The Never-Ending Conflict," in Ronald C. White and Albright G. Zimmerman, An Unsettled Arena: Religion and the Bill of Rights, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990, p. 72. "Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia (1782), from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 363. "It is a heretic that makes the fire, not she which burns in it."
-- William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English playwright and poet, "The Winter's Tale", Act 2, Scene 3, according to Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 87. "Even a space ape must urinate."
-- Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape "Cultural training can achieve a great deal, but no matter how brilliant the machinery of the higher centres of the brain, it needs a considerable degree of support from the lower regions."
-- Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape "By my plans was Sparta shorn of her glory,
And holy Messenia at last received back her children.
By the arms of Thebes was Megalopolis fortified,
And all of Greece became independent and free."
-- the epitaph of Epaminondas "Survival is the ability to swim in strange currents."
-- Bene Gesserit Axiom, in Dune by Frank Herbert "This is how Idiot America engages the great issues of the day. It decides, en masse, with a thousand keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the poor biologist's words carry no more weight than the thunderations of some turkey-neck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Facility in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an 'expert' and, therefore, an 'elitist.' Nobody buys his books. Nobody puts him on cable. He's brilliant, surely, but his Gut's the same as ours. He just ignores it, poor fool."
-- Charles Pierce, "Greetings from Idiot America" "If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is there that the Gut rules. Held to this standard, any scientific theory is rendered mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample. This is how there's a 'debate' over the very existence of global warming, even though the preponderance of fact among those who actually have studied the phenomenon renders the 'debate' quite silly. The debate is about making people feel better about driving SUVs. The debate is less about climatology than it is about guiltlessly topping off your tank and voting in tax incentives for oil companies."
-- Charles Pierce, "Greetings from Idiot America" "Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day."
-- Sophocles, Oedipus Rex "It is no weakness for the wisest man to learn when he is wrong."
-- Sophocles, Antigone "No other touchstone can test the heart of a man, the temper of his mind and spirit, till he be tried in the practice of authority and rule."
-- Sophocles, Antigone "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life; that word is love."
-- Sophocles "E PLURIBUS UNUM ... is the Latin motto on the face of the Great Seal of the United States; .... This phrase means one out of the many. It refers to the creation of one nation, the United States, out of 13 colonies. It is equally appropriate to today's federal system. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, members of the first committee for the selection of the seal, suggested the motto in 1776. It can be traced back to Horace's Epistles [65-8 BCE]. Since 1873, the law requires that this motto appear on one side of every United States coin that is minted."
-- Donald H. Mugridge, World Book Encyclopedia, Volume 6 (E), Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1976, p.2. "E Pluribus Unum" has appeared on most U. S. coins, beginning in the late 1790s. The motto "In God We Trust" did not appear on any U. S. coin until 1864, when "Its presence on the new coin was due largely to the increased religious sentiment during the Civil War Crisis," according to R. S. Yeoman, A Guide Book of United States Coins, 38th ed., Racine, Wisc.: Western Publishing Co., p. 89. The religious motto did not appear regularly on U. S. paper money until the 1950s. "Academy, n. A modern school where football is taught."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "So how is shamanistic or theological or New Age doctrine different from quantum mechanics? The answer is that even if we cannot understand it, we can verify that quantum mechanics works. We can compare the quantitative predictions of quantum theory with the measured wavelengths of spectral lines of the chemical elements, the behavoir of semiconductors and liquid helium, microprocessors, which kinds of molecules form from their constituent atoms, the existence and properties of white dwarf stars, what happens in masers and lasers, and which materials are susceptible to which kinds of magnetism. We don't have to understand the theory to see what it predicts. We don't have to be accomplished physicists to read what the experiments reveal. In every one of these instances -- as in many others -- the predictions of quantum mechanics are strikingly, and to high accuracy, confirmed."
-- Carl Sagan, Chapter 14: "Antiscience" (page 250), The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark "Such... is the respect paid to science that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recalls some well-known scientific phrase"
-- James Clerk Maxwell, as quoted by Brian L. Silver in The Ascent of Science "The problem is lazy teachers. Teaching of critical thinking skills requires considerable effort and individualized teacher-student interaction. Rote memorization, on the other hand, is easy to teach. You simply give students the material and then give them a test to see if they memorized it."
-- Michael Wong "Some people wrestle with their personal demons. I stabbed mine in the back of the head."
-- Black Mage, Episode 617: "Thinking Ahead", 8-Bit Theater "Can we get this kid a Cluepon, stat?"
-- Martin Kemmish "In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are consequences."
-- Robert Ingersoll "...he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was -- a woman."
-- Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow "It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet."
-- Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow "I will never, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. On the contrary, we are bound, you, I, and everyone, to make common cause, even with error itself, to maintain the common right of freedom of conscience."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 499 "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, in a letter to Baron von Humboldt, 1813, from George Seldes, ed., The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1983, p. 370 "The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man."
-- Thomas Jefferson, as quoted by Saul K. Padover in Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, New York, 1946, p. 165, according to Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Liberty, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 48 "... If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814. From Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 358 "Across the ages, clergy have been interested [according to Jefferson] not in truth but only in wealth and power; when rational people have had difficulty swallowing 'their impious heresies,' then the clergy have, with the help of the state, forced 'them down their throats.' Five years later, [Jefferson] wrote of 'this loathsome combination of church and state' that for so many centuries reduced human beings to 'dupes and drudges.'"
-- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 47. According to Gaustad, the first quotes are from a letter from Jefferson to William Baldwin, January 19, 1810; the second source is a letter from Jefferson to Charles Clay, January 29, 1815 "I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives.... It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolt those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. M. Harrison Smith: Mrs. M. Harrison, August 6, 1816. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 492 "He [Jefferson] rejoiced with John Adams when the Congregational church was finally disestablished in Connecticut in 1818; welcoming 'the resurrection of Connecticut to light and liberty', Jefferson congratulated Adams 'that this den of priesthood is at length broken up, and that a protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace American history and character.'"
-- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 49 "In 1820 as he described his plans for the University of Virginia to his former private secretary, William Short, Jefferson acknowledged that his plan for the first truly secular university would have opposition: weak opposition (in his view) from the College of William and Mary, but strong opposition from 'the priests of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous.'"
-- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 48. The letter to Short was dated 13 April 1820 "Jefferson bemoaned the pattern of church life that gave the unenlightened and bigoted clergy 'stated and privileged days to collect and catechize us, opportunities of delivering their oracles to the people in mass, and of moulding their minds as wax in the hollow of their hands.' Despite this enormous advantage, however, Virginians are liberal enough, reasonable enough, to 'give fair play' to a university [the University of Virginia] set free from dogmatisms and fixed ideas."
-- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 48 "Ignorance is no argument."
-- Baruch Spinoza, Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata et in quinque parses distincta, Part 1, Addendum; Amsterdam, 1677. A contributor to an article I read about this added: "Originally used to oppose traditional theological views that everything exists and is determined by divine intervention because no other plausible reason or explanation is seen." "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."
-- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments "From the finest lumber our mills can supply!"
-- Tomanian Dictator Aranoid Hinkel, The Great Dictator. Hinkel is responding to complaints about sawdust in the bread. "Only religion could make millions of people take a book seriously as an historical or scientific resource even when it describes talking shrubbery."
-- Michael Wong "At length the Vision closes; and the mind, / Not undisturbed by the delight it feels, / Which slowly settles into peaceful calm, / Is left to muse upon the solemn scene."
-- William Wordsworth, "A Night-Piece" "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
-- Henry David Thoreau, Chapter 1: "Economy", Walden "[I]t is contrary to the principles of reason and justice that any should be compelled to contribute to the maintenance of a church with which their consciences will not permit them to join, and from which they can derive no benefit; for remedy whereof, and that equal liberty as well religious as civil, may be universally extended to all the good people of this commonwealth."
-- George Mason, "Virginia Declaration of Rights", 1776; from Pamela Copeland and Richard MacMaster, The Five George Masons: Patriots and Planters of Virginia and Maryland, University Press of Virginia, 1989, p. 176 "We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In the enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States."
-- George Washington, letter to the members of the New Church in Baltimore, January 27, 1793; from John H. Rhodehamel, ed., George Washington: Writings, New York: Library of America, 1997, p. 834 "... Jefferson, who as a careful historian had made a study of the origin of the maxim [that the common law is inextricably linked with Christianity], challenged such an assertion. He noted that 'the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or that such a character existed .... What a conspiracy this, between Church and State.'"
-- Leo Pfeffer, Religion, State, and the Burger Court, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1984, p. 121 "A final example of Jefferson's separationism may be drawn from his founding of the University of Virginia in the last years of his life. Prepared to transform the College of William and Mary into the principal university of the state, Jefferson would do so only if the college divested itself of all ties with sectarian religion -- that is, with its old Anglicanism now represented by the Protestant Episcopal Church. The college declined to make that break with its past, and Jefferson proceeded with plans for his own university well to the west of Anglican-dominated tidewater Virginia. In Charlottesville this new school ('broad & liberal & modern,' as Jefferson envisioned it in a letter to [Joseph] Priestly of 18 January 1800) opened in 1825 with professorships in languages and law, natural and moral philosophy, history and mathematics, but not in divinity. In Jefferson's view, as reported in Robert Healey's Jefferson on Religion in Public Education, not only did Virginia's laws prohibit such favoritism (for divinity or theology was inevitably sectarian), but high-quality education was not well served by those who preferred mystery to morals and divisive dogma to the unities of science. Too great a devotion to doctrine can drive men mad; if it does not have that tragic effect, it at least guarantees that a man's education will be mediocre. What is really significant in religion, its moral content, would be taught at the University of Virginia, but in philosophy, not divinity. If Almighty God has made the mind free, one of the ways to keep it free is to protect young minds from the clouded convolutions of theologians. Jefferson wanted education separated from religion because of his own conclusions concerning the nature of religion, its strengths and its weaknesses, its dark past and its possibly brighter future."
-- E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, pp. 282-283 "To conclude this discussion of the religious clauses of the First Amendment, let's talk some more about Thomas Jefferson and his 'wall.' Some TV preachers, as well as writers, politicians, and, worst of all, Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, have sought to pull down the wall by disparaging Jefferson's influence on the First Amendment. A popular bit of historical revisionism that floats around these days goes something like this: Jefferson served as ambassador to France during the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He had no hand in their preparation and passage because he was out of the country. Therefore, his metaphor about the "wall of separation" is misplaced and ill-informed because he was living in France and was out of touch. Tommyrot! Thomas Jefferson was James Madison's mentor. Madison as the chief architect of both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights drew heavily from Jefferson's ideas and kept in regular contact with his fellow Virginian even though the latter lived in France. Volumes of correspondence exist between the two men as they discussed the day's crucial events. Jefferson understood that the First Amendment created a separation between church and state because he, more than most of the Founders, gave form and substance to the nation's understanding of how the two institutions should best relate in the new nation. Some politicians, lawyers, and preachers subject us to mental cruelty when they disparage Jefferson's interpretation simply because he lived in France during the years of the Constitution's framing."
-- Robert L. Maddox, Baptist minister and speech writer and religious liaison for President Jimmy Carter, Separation of Church and State: Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1987, pp. 67-68 "Moving well beyond the traditional deistic triad of God, freedom, and immortality, Jefferson revealed his strongest feelings and convictions with regard to the ecclesiastics. On two counts he found them critically deficient. In the realm of politics and power, they were tyrannical; in the realm of theology and truth, they were perverse. Jefferson's strongest language is reserved for those clergy who, as he said in a letter to Moses Robinson of 23 March 1801, 'had got a smell of union between church and state' and would impede the advance of liberty and science. Such clergy, whether in America or abroad, have so adulterated religion that it has become 'a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves' and a means of grasping 'impious heresies, in order to force them down [men's] throats' (letter to Samuel Kercheval, 19 January 1810). In his old age, Jefferson softened his invective not one whit: 'The Presbyterian clergy are the loudest, the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical and ambitious, ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a word could be obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere, the flames in which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus, because he could not find in his Euclid the proposition which has demonstrated that three are one, and one is three.' And if they cannot revive the holy inquisition of the Middle Ages, they will seek to mobilize the inquisition of public opinion, 'that lord of the Universe' (letter to William Short, 13 April 1820). Jefferson, the enemy of all arbitrary and capricious power, found that which was clothed in the ceremonial garb of religion to be particularly despicable. Even more disturbing to Jefferson was the priestly perversion of simple truths. If 'in this virgin hemisphere' it was no longer possible to burn men's bodies, it was still possible to stunt their minds. In the 'revolution of 1800' that saw Jefferson's election to the presidency, the candidate wrote to his good friend Rush that while his views would please deists and rational Christians, they would never please that 'irritable tribe of priests' who still hoped for government sanction and support. Nor would his election please them, 'especially the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists.' They fear that I will oppose their schemes of establishment. 'And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man' (23 September 1800). It was this aspect of establishment that Jefferson most dreaded and most relentlessly opposed -- not just the power, profit, and corruption that invariably accompanied state-sanctioned ecclesiasticism but the theological distortion and intellectual absurdity that passed for reason and good sense. We must not be held captive to 'the Platonic mysticisms' or to the 'gossamer fabrics of factitious religion.' Nor must we ever again be required to confess that which mankind did not and could not comprehend, 'for I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition.'"
-- letter to John Adams, 22 August 1813, E. S. Gaustad, "Religion," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986, p. 291 "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind."
-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 1794-1795. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 494 "Chaplainships of both Congress and the armed services were established sixteen years before the First Amendment was adopted. It would have been fatuous folly for anybody to stir a major controversy over a minor matter before the meaning of the amendment had been threshed out in weightier matters. But Madison did foresee the danger that minor deviations from the constitutional path would deepen into dangerous precedents. He took care of one of them by his veto [in 1811] of the appropriation for a Baptist church. Others he dealt with in his 'Essay on Monopolies,' unpublished until 1946. Here is what he wrote: 'Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a national establishment ... ?' The appointments, he said, were also a palpable violation of equal rights. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? 'To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the veil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers, or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.' The problem, said the author of the First Amendment, was how to prevent 'this step beyond the landmarks of power [from having] the effect of a legitimate precedent.' Rather than let that happen, it would 'be better to apply to it the legal aphorism de minimis non curat lex [the law takes no account of trifles].' Or, he said (likewise in Latin), class it with faults that result from carelessness or that human nature could scarcely avoid.' 'Better also,' he went on, 'to disarm in the same way, the precedent of Chaplainships for the army and navy, than erect them into a political authority in matters of religion.' ... The deviations from constitutional principles went further: 'Religious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts are shoots from the same root with the legislative acts reviewed. Altho' recommendations only, they imply a religious agency, making no part of the trust delegated to political rulers.'"
-- Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965, pp. 423-424. Brant gives the source of "Essay on Monopolies" as Elizabeth Fleet, "Madison's Detached Memoranda," William & Mary Quarterly, Third series: Vol. III, No. 4 [October, 1946], pp. 554-562. The Madison being referred to is, of course, James Madison, 1751-1836; principal author, U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights; 4th U.S. President, 1809-1817 "And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
-- James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822; published in The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings, ed. by Saul K. Padover, New York: Harper & Bros., 1953 "As President, Washington regularly attended Christian services, and he was friendly in his attitude toward Christian values. However, he repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary.... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative. George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian. In the enlightened tradition of his day, he was a devout Deist -- just as many of the clergymen who knew him suspected."
-- Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol, New York: The Free Press, 1987, pp. 174-175 "In his youth John Adams (1735-1826) thought to become a minister, but soon realized that his independent opinions would create much difficulty. At the age of twenty-one, therefore, he resolved to become a lawyer, noting that in following law rather than divinity, 'I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.'"
-- Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 88. The Adams quote is from his letter to Richard Cranch, August 29, 1756 "Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."
-- John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" [1787-1788]; from Adrienne Koch, ed., The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 258 "Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and Dogmatism cannot confine it."
-- John Adams, letter to John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816. From Edwin S. Gaustad, Faith of Our Fathers: Religion and the New Nation, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 88 "Social radicalism in America had long been tinged with anticlericalism. The old alliances of church establishments with local aristocracies, and the widespread assumption of the clergy that God was a disciple of Alexander Hamilton, had antagonized men of liberal inclination; and European deism obligingly provided plausible arguments from history and philosophy for detesting the clergy and spurning revealed religion. The French Revolution sharpened the issue when its antireligious excesses provoked preachers throughout the country to warn against too much democracy. The writings of Ethan Allen, Joel Barlow and Elihu Palmer, and the free-thinking societies which dotted the young nation in the seventeen nineties, were notable expressions of this republican anticlericalism."
-- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., American historian, The Age of Jackson, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945, p. 136. Schlesinger won the Pulitzer Prize for History for The Age of Jackson "Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."
-- Frederick Douglass, speech in Washington DC (April 1886) "There is a class of people who seem to think that if a man should fall overboard into the sea with a Bible in his pocket it would hardly be possible to drown. I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."
-- Frederick Douglass "A black guy dissing a white guy is 'reverse racism'. Because, as we all know, racism only applies to the victimization of black people."
-- Damien Sorresso "The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn: 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action ... 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: -- the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations; ... 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily..."
-- Benjamin Franklin, "The Morals of Chess" (article) (1750) "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
-- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more."
-- Winston Churchill, Roving Commission: My Early Life (1930) Chapter 9 "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
-- Winston Churchill, speech at Harvard University (6 September 1943) "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
-- Isaac Asimov "That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art."
-- John Locke "Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness."
-- George Orwell, Can Socialists Be Happy? (1943) "The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the regime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom -- that is the idea, more or less."
-- George Orwell, As I Please (28 April 1944) "The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it."
-- George Orwell, Some Thoughts on the Common Toad "Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946) "...moral principles are not the result of any revelation but originate from the very structure of man's reason."
-- taken from an entry in The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 26, 15th edition "In 1776 our fathers endeavored to retire the gods from politics. They declared that 'all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' This was a contradiction of the then political ideas of the world; it was, as many believed, an act of pure blasphemy a renunciation of the Deity. ...It was a notice to all churches and priests that thereafter mankind would govern and protect themselves. Politically it tore down every altar and denied the authority of every 'sacred book' and appealed from the Providence of God to the Providence of man."
-- Robert Ingersoll "The dilemma in Jonathan Chait's analysis is that it needs analysis at all. It took columnist Max Boot one line to say that Democrats had flip-flopped on the war. Chait needed his entire column to explain that it is not flip-flopping when the information surrounding the war had changed.
The current rules of debate have taken on the attention-span limitations of a cocktail party. A simple rule of thumb is that you must get in your response in less time than it would take for Sean Hannity to interrupt you.
The fact is, if people truly wanted a real understanding of a matter, talk radio would be out of business. People no longer want information as much as they want to be on the winning side, for feeling right is more important than being right.
Many people think the more simple the argument, even if the issue isn't, the more easy it is to win the debate -- a debate that is no debate at all."
-- Steve Young, letter to the Los Angeles Times newspaper, Tuesday, December 6, 2005, Re "Logic isn't flip-flopping," Opinion, Dec. 4 "'You haven't explained everything yet,' is not a competing hypothesis."
-- Daniel C. Dennett "The great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the Western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had."
-- C.S. Snow, The Two Cultures "Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it."
-- Vincent van Gogh "Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence.

If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence.

Irony is 'a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result.' For instance: a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony.

If a Kurd, after surviving bloody battle with Saddam Hussein’s army and a long, difficult escape through the mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large.

Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley’s son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley’s son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum’s son that will be precisely ironic."
-- George Carlin, Brain Droppings "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814 "A photograph is usually looked at -- seldom looked into."
-- Ansel Adams "The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth."
-- Harold Evans, Pictures on a Page: Photo-Journalism, Graphics and Picture Editing (1997) "With all, the beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit; but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which will make a passing love permanent for ever."
-- Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies (1871), Chapter I "To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction -- every kind of evidence in the logician's list -- have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation."
-- Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Chapter II "Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity."
-- Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'ubervilles (1891), Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays, Chapter XLIII "Both bullshit and diamonds are carbon-based; but you can't polish a turd until it's jewelry."
-- Martin Kemmish "I think the standards for any website are 'layouts that aren't shit.'"
-- Brad Johnson "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
-- Douglas Adams "Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on."
-- Unknown "Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."
-- Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long "Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals."
-- Agnes Repplier, Points of View "No matter how many weapons you have, no matter how great your technology might be, the world cannot live without love."
-- Sheeta, Castle in the Sky "Honor? Well, I don't like that word, but somehow, when you say it, it doesn't sound so bad."
-- Porco Rosso, Porco Rosso "When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
-- Alexander Graham Bell "Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden "He who boasts of his ancestry is praising the deeds of another."
-- Seneca, The Madness of Hercules (Hercules Furens) "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners."
-- Ernst Jan Plugge "There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life."
-- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (page 181) "A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge.

The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man then saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other.

How sweet it tasted."
-- Zen poem "How reluctantly
the bee emerges from deep
within the peony"
-- Matsuo Basho "The woods
would be very silent
if only those birds sang
who sing the best."
-- Unknown "Absence is to love as wind to fire; it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big."
-- Umberto Eco "It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money, as long as you have got it"
-- Edwin Way Teale, Circle of the Seasons "All democrats are insane, but not one of them knows it; none but the republicans and mugwumps know it. All the republicans are insane, but only the democrats and mugwumps can perceive it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."
-- Mark Twain, What Is Man and Other Philosophical Writings "It is always in season for old men to learn."
-- Aeschylus, "Agamemnon" "It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences."
-- Aristotle, Rhetoric "About nature consult nature herself."
-- Francis Bacon, Instauratio Magna "No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth."
-- Francis Bacon, "Essays" "Accident, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Homoeopathist, n. The humorist of the medical profession."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do."
-- Bertrand Russell, as quoted in Antony Flew's Thinking About Thinking "There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."
-- George Washington, address to Congress, January 8, 1790 "The 'you refuse to acknowledge all the possibilities' argument is a common asshole technique. It is a rhetorical trick designed to take advantage of the fact that if you take an extreme philosophical view, anything is possible. But science has achieved so much because it rejects such extremist (not to mention thoroughly useless) thinking and sticks to what can be demonstrated.

If science did not have this policy, it would never have gotten anywhere. We'd still be arguing about whether every action really has an equal and opposite reaction, and whether the Sun is really Apollo's chariot because we have to 'acknowledge the possibility', no matter how little evidence or how little logic there is behind it."
-- Michael Wong "...the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, not an unreasonable doubt. Crowing that the evidence has 'holes' in it is like crowing that the police in a murder trial were only able to recover part of the body from the lake, so you can't be sure the victim died."
-- Michael Wong "...this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection -- or at least amelioration -- against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological. It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water."
-- Keith Olbermann, "The 'City' of Louisiana", Bloggermann, Sep 5, 2005 "At some point, some of these people are going to wake up to find that the great secular assault they see on their children was, in fact, a bogeyman created to hide their own bad parenting. If they can't convince their own kids of the appropriateness of their religion and values, then the religion, the values, or the convincing, must not have been very good."
-- Keith Olbermann, "Delusions of grandeur at 'Focus on the Family'", Bloggermann, Jan 29, 2005 "The obstacle is the path"
-- Proverb (Zen) "...treating illnesses is why we became doctors. Treating patients is what makes most doctors miserable."
-- Dr. House, "Pilot", House Mr. O'Neill: "Well, why don't you write a story taking people you know in real life and turning them into fictional characters?"
Daria: "I wonder if anyone would notice a difference."
-- Episode #213: "Write Where it Hurts", Daria Jane: "What's the problem? Take people you know and have them do whatever you want. I'd make them crawl, I tell you. Crawl!"
Daria: "Easy, tiger."
-- Episode #213: "Write Where it Hurts", Daria Jane: "Well, listen, now that you've got such a great attitude and everything, can I have your boots?"
Daria: "Yeah. Turn around and I'll give you one right now."
-- Episode #213: "Write Where it Hurts", Daria Daria: "Don't worry. I don't have low self-esteem. It's a mistake."
Jake: "I'll say!"
Daria: "I have low esteem for everyone else."
-- Episode #101: "Esteemsters", Daria Ms. Defoe: (examines Daria's drawing) "Good work, Daria. Your cube is bursting out of the picture plane. You've really created the illusion of depth."
Daria: "I'm thinking of going into politics."
-- Episode #102: "The Invitation", Daria Jane: "Thanks for the ride, Trent."
Trent: "No problem. I needed a break anyway. I've been practicing for ten hours straight."
Jane: "Daria, would you say sleeping with a guitar in your hands counts as practicing?"
Trent: "As long as you don't drop it."
-- Episode #102: "The Invitation", Daria Jane: "What happened to all your paper-writing money?"
Daria: "My mom wouldn't let me keep it. She said it was wrong to encourage cheaters and to profit from them."
Jane: "So, she's giving up being a lawyer?"
Daria: "I asked her that. And I'm sure some day we'll once again be on speaking terms."
-- Episode #103: "College Bored", Daria "To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall."
-- Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), Chapter I "Above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a celestial globe."
-- Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native (1878), Book 1, Chapter 2 (Jane waves hand in front of Daria's face)
Daria: "I can see that, funny gal."
Jane: (holds up two fingers) "How many fingers?"
Daria: "I've got one for you."
-- Episode #301: "Through A Lens Darkly", Daria "Your brain is like your stomach in the sense that if it's empty, you're willing to put anything in there to fill it up."
-- Dilbert, Dilbert "There's no better training than the real thing."
-- Mukuro, Yu Yu Hakusho "You don't need to condition a person to believe in an idea; you only need to condition him to think that this idea is not stupid or laughable. Do that, and it becomes a viable notion in his head, ready to be called into action in moments of despair or misery to make him feel better. But that last step is still a choice."
-- Michael Wong Jane: "I can't believe it. Finally someone I know is attacked by animals, and I and my video camera are nowhere to be found."
Daria: "I'm not sure if cute little furballs milling around your feet really constitutes an attack."
Jane: "Hey, you don't know what they were thinking."
-- Episode #306: "It Happened One Nut", Daria Helen: "Jane, since you're staying with us and all I thought... well, you're Daria's best friend, and she's, she's so hard to talk to these days..."
Jane: "Maximum of three questions. No betrayals. Immunity from prosecution."
Helen: "Agreed. Drugs?"
Jane: "Nope, unless you count TV."
Helen: "Depressed?"
Jane: "No, just realistic."
Helen: "Sex? Oh, that's too obvious. Can I have another one?"
-- Episode #308: "Lane Miserables", Daria "Great acts are made up of small deeds."
-- Lao Tsu Jane: "What's the going rate for an artist's soul these days?"
Trent: "20 bucks, an hour of free studio time and a set of tires."
Jane: "That's it?"
Trent: "They're new tires."
-- Episode #311: "The Lawndale File", Daria "Your words cut deep. Deeper than any blade."
-- Momochi Zabuza, Naruto "Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will."
-- Mahatma Gandhi "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
-- Plato (427 BC - 347 BC) "... imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in -- and interesting hole I find myself in -- fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."
-- Douglas Adams, from an impromptu speech he gave at a Cambridge conference in 1998 "It's definitely a troll tactic. People with real psychological problems do their level best to function normally; they do not unapologetically act like idiots or assholes and then blame their conditions."
-- Michael Wong Ms. Li: "Don't think you can intimiate... intermolate... don't think you can scare me with your threat to picket naked!"
Mr. DeMartino: "You think I'm bluffing?! This is Goodwill polyester I've been sweating in all night. I want to picket naked!"
-- Episode #506: "Lucky Strike", Daria Jane: "You'll figure something out. Use your womanly attributes."
Daria: "Gotcha. I'll give birth."
-- Episode #507: "Art Burn", Daria Daria: "If you're looking for a way to occupy yourself, there are plenty of chores that need doing around here."
(Helen and Jake glare at Daria)
Daria: "What? You get to say it."
-- Episode #201: "Arts 'N Crass", Daria Ms. Li: "Curiosity... inquiry... expression... these are the building blocks of education."
Brittany: "Ma'am?"
Ms. Li: "No questions!"
-- Episode #201: "Arts 'N Crass", Daria Trent: "All right, here's the plan. I'll sit right here with my foot on the accelerator, ready to burn rubber."
Jane: "Trent, pull over here and make sure you turn off the car in case you fall asleep, okay?"
Trent: "Alternate plan. Cool."
-- Episode #201: "Arts 'N Crass", Daria "Users have an infinite potential for making unexpected misinterpretations of interface elements and for performing their job in a different way than you imagine."
-- Jakob Nielsen "I am glad to see you not so wanting in courage as in sense. But courage without conduct is the virtue of a robber, or a tyrant."
-- Myron, in The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault Jane: "Coming over the horizon at #8 is 'I Stay Away' by Alice in Chains. In this video, delightful puppet people encounter death and dismemberment... at the circus!"
Daria: "Now that's entertainment. Roll it!"
-- "Top 10 Animated Videos Countdown" featuring Jane and Daria from the animated series, Daria Jane: "Here's #7: a-ha's 'Take on Me,' about the love of a flesh-and-blood woman for her animated dream-man."
Daria: "Or, depending on how you interpret it, the love of some androgynous, barely musical Eurotrash for their blowdriers."
Jane: "Are you sure you've quite got the spirit of this countdown?"
-- "Top 10 Animated Videos Countdown" featuring Jane and Daria from the animated series, Daria "Why is it so goddamned hard to get little assholes like you to admit it when you fuck up? Is it pride? What gives you the right to have any pride?"
-- Michael Wong "...what are you thinking? We're politicians now! We're not supposed to give a shit about our constituents!"
-- Damien Sorresso "I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."
-- John Masefield Ms. Barch: "Class, our planetarium trip has been canceled due to lack of funds. So your assignment tonight is to locate Orion the Hunter in the sky, then write an essay on why you think he needs to carry a weapon to feel like a man."
-- Episode #501: "Fizz Ed", Daria Ms. Barch: "Today we'll discuss the planets' relative distance from the sun."
Upchuck: "But we did that two weeks ago, Ms. B."
Ms. Barch: "And now we're going to do it again, Charles. Unless you wish to spend the period in independent study?"
Upchuck: (shivers in fear) "No... not the closet."
-- Episode #501: "Fizz Ed", Daria Jake: "I'm really going to wow 'em at work tomorrow! Oh, look, I'm receiving some sort of message in code." (laptop screen shows random characters being displayed) "Looks technical. This is exciting!"
Daria: "You're leaning on the keyboard again."
-- Episode #502: "Sappy Anniversary", Daria "I'm not going to lose sleep over yet another adolescent brat who thinks that 'maturity' is about acting polite rather than taking responsibility for your own mistakes and words."
-- Michael Wong "Isn't it wonderful having an inquisitive mind in the midst of people for whom inquisition means 'Forcefully convert through torture'?"
-- Neal Coleman "I find that the best way to deal with the 'evolutionists are biased one way, creationists are biased another' is to explain the scientific method. Someone who thinks that people are trained to accept evolution as an assumption doesn't understand the scientific method at all: (a) evolution is a conclusion, not an assumption, and (b) creationists assume the truth of the Bible when there's no need to do so. So, the conflict's not really a competition -- as creationists like to portray it -- between the assumption of the truth of the Bible and the assumption of an evolutionistic worldview, but rather a competition between a more parsimonious and less parsimonious explanation.

To give an example, creationism is literally like someone arguing that we must be able to travel faster than the speed of light because it's possible in Star Wars. When we try to rationalize Star Wars, we have to assume the truth of everything we see in the movies, and work the science around those assumptions. This is precisely how creationists think: they have to assume the truth of the Bible, and work the science around those assumptions. The difference is that we Star Wars fans don't try to say that Star Wars is actually literal reality, and so we aren't compelled to try to alter real-life science so that it describes both reality and Star Wars simultaneously."
-- Neal Coleman "Fundamentalism is rigorously and systematically used to indoctrinate and subjugate young minds. It is a contraceptive designed to prevent intellectual fertilization."
-- Stephen Jay Gould "The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators ... They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens."
-- William Graham Sumner "Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny -- and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do)."
-- Stephen Jay Gould "...of the almost five thousand people who got together, in the city of Viborg, on the 26th of february.

There were no political intentions.

'Then why did they do it?', you might ask. 'Why did they get together for an unknown cause?'

I guess sometimes, we just need to show that we can."
-- Nullermanden House: "Define real. They were real experiences. What they meant, personally, I choose to believe that the white light people sometimes see, visions, this patient saw: they're all just chemical reactions that take place when the brain shuts down."
Foreman: "You choose to believe that?"
House: "There's no conclusive science. My choice has no practical relevance to my life, I choose the outcome I find more comforting."
Cameron: "You find it more comforting to believe that this is it?"
House: "I find it more comforting to believe that this isn't simply a test."
-- House "We're all a little weird. And life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness -- and call it love."
-- Robert Fulgham "Man who conquers other men is strong, man who conquers himself is invulnerable."
-- Lao Tzu Trent: "Would it help if we spelled mystik with two Y's?"
Daria: (VO) "And I'll spell my name D-A-R-Y-A and be crowned Miss America." (spoken) "It might."
-- Episode #111: "Road Worrier", Daria Jesse: "You'd never catch me in a job like that."
Daria (VO): "Because it falls under the category of employment."
Trent: "Hey man, we're artists. Who knows where we'll be in five years."
Daria (VO): "Still living over your parent's garage?"
Jane (loud whisper): "Say it, Daria. Whatever you're thinking, say it. If you don't, they'll go on like this for hours."
Jesse: "We've got a vision."
Trent: "Eyes on the prize, man. Eyes on the prize."
Jesse: "Yeah, and this guy's not about selling out."
Trent: "No way."
Jane: "'Cause for that to happen, you'd need someone interested in buying. (pause) Well, someone had to pick up the slack!"
-- Episode #111: "Road Worrier", Daria Daria: "They're not going to make fun of me?"
Jane: "For peeing in the woods? They're in a band, Daria. Those boys puke on each other on a regular basis."
Jesse (to Trent): That reminds me: you owe me a shirt."
-- Episode #111: "Road Worrier", Daria "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire "Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."
-- Kurt Cobain "There is something called, 'ergonomically designed furniture' which is a fancy name for 'chairs that aren't designed by idiots who don't pay attention to human anatomy'."
-- [Zoints]DChapman, "Forum Owners, Beware of Back, Neck, and Shoulder Pain!", Admin Zone "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials "Later I watched you in Marseilles / disappearing in the din, not turning back, and I who loved only the sea's expanse / now say I could have loved you too."
-- Nikos Kavadias, "A bord de 'L'Aspasia" Roper: "Arrest him!"
More: "For what?"
Roper: "He's dangerous!"
More: "Libel. He's a spy!"
Roper: "That man's bad!"
More: "There's no law against that."
Roper: "God's law!"
More: "Then God can arrest him."
Roper: "While you talk, he's gone!"
More: "Go he should, if he were the Devil, until he broke the law."
Roper: "Now you give the Devil benefit of law!"
More: "Yes, what would you do? Cut a road through the law to get after the Devil?"
Roper: "Yes. I'd cut down every law in England to do that."
More: "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on you... where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted with laws from coast to coast... Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down...and you're just the man to do it...do you really think you could stand upright in the wind that would blow then?"
Roper: "Yes."
More: "I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake."
-- A Man For All Seasons "Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse."
-- Goethe Ms. Morris: "Your sister Penny never wanted to participate, either. I taught her a thing or two about the American competitive spirit."
Jane: "You sure did. That's why she's spent the last ten years out of the country."
Ms. Morris: "I know what kind of upbringing she's had. What's your excuse?"
Daria: "I'm just plain no good?"
-- Episode #211: "See Jane Run", Daria Jane: "Tell me that at least I have my integrity."
Daria: "Integrity is a funny word."
Jane: "Well, then, at least tell me I'm marginally less corrupt than the jocks."
Daria: "You refused to participate in a crooked system where good grades are exchanged for athletic performance. But you didn't try to reform the system, either."
Jane: "For fear of complete teenage exile."
Daria: "Right. So the system continues, you haven't redeemed yourself, and we're ostracized anyway."
Jane: "Come on, now, stop trying to paint a rosy picture."
Daria: "You know what?"
Jane: "What?"
Daria: "They really are preparing us for the real world."
-- Episode #211: "See Jane Run", Daria "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish"
-- Euripides "History is philosophy teaching by examples."
-- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, The Antiquities of Rome "Stand Tall and Shake the Heavens"
-- Xenogears "It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."
-- Voltaire "Thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find nothing."
-- Aesop "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."
-- T. E. Lawrence Evey: "Who are you?"
V: "Who? Who is but the form following the function of 'what', and what I am is a man in a mask."
Evey: "Well I can see that."
V: "Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation, I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is."
Evey: "Oh...right."
-- V for Vendetta "Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici" -- By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe. "You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."
-- Heinlein "'I will pray for you,' is the Christian way of saying, 'fuck you!'"
-- J.D./Doctor X "It should be the duty of every rational person to bash religion when it causes tragedy."
-- Michael Wong "Any fall is ultimately going to be for the usual reasons: Complacency and a populace whose dumb as toast."
-- Martin Kemmish "I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!"
-- Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes "If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected."
-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War "Pride is the emotional reward of achievement. It is not a vice to be overcome but a virtue to be attained."
-- Nathaniel Branden "The presence of a lightning rod on top of a church steeple shows a decided lack of Faith."
-- Lord Byron "Most anti-evolution arguments fall into the 'explain to me how this works' category, in which you are made to assume the position of the teacher and the creationist assumes the position of a defiant student. Needless to say, you can't teach a defiant student anything, because he is not really listening to you. No high school teacher would expect to produce results under those conditions.

Notice how the vast majority of creationists never explain how the scientific theory works and then try to show what's wrong with it. Instead, they expect you to explain it for them, and they will pass judgment on whether they think your explanation was adequate. Thus forcing you to do all the work even though they are the ones claiming to debunk established science."
-- Michael Wong "The nutritional value of your diet is directly correlated to the fitness of your body and mind. Experiments done with rowdy teens of 'white trash' backgrounds who don't concentrate at school and go off on drinking binges, showed that after a nutritionist modified their diet, they changed personality-wise. The easily bored, easily irritable child became more of a well-mannered, more keen to learn and respect others simply because they were purging their body of the shit such as high sugar, high salt, high saturated fat and additives food and drink they consumed (not surprisingly, from massive multinational food corporations). They could actually measure the amount of crap from their hair records which changed over a couple of weeks to show less impurities growing into the new hair.

In summation, you are what you eat, as the old adage goes. Eat mass produced garbage, and your body and mind will become garbage. This study surprises me less than the sun rising everyday."
-- Nick Edwards "I find myself coming back to my original conclusion that most of the world's problems disappear when you remove humanity. Maybe someone could use that as their election platform."
-- Nick Edwards "Now that the creationists are deprived of their chance of burning people at the stake, their best argument is gone."
-- Isaac Asimov, "Life and Time" "But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all costs."
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground "A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?"
-- Ernst Haas "There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that - can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: 'Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.' It was the old, old story of the sacrifical lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded... sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows. We will go forward. Forward is the great password. And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said 'go ahead, take it, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland -- remilitarize it -- take all of Austria, take it! And then one day we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual began in this courtoom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a passing phase had become the way of life.

Your honor, I was content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name, until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise the specter again. You have seen him do it -- he has done it here in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked for the benefit of people. He has suggested that we sterilized men for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the old Jew did sleep with the sixteen year old girl, after all. Once more it is being done for love of country. It is not easy to tell the truth; but if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it... whatever the pain and humiliation."
-- Ernst Janning, Judgment at Nuremberg Ernst Janning: "Judge Haywood... the reason I asked you to come. Those people, those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. YOU must believe it, YOU MUST believe it."
Judge Dan Haywood: "Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent."
-- Judgment at Nuremberg "Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and death of millions by the government of which he was a part. Janning's record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial. If he and the other defendants were all depraved perverts -- if the leaders of the Third Reich were sadistic monsters and maniacs -- these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake or other natural catastrophes. But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men -- even able and extraordinary men -- can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs... The murder of children... How easily that can happen. There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the protection of the country. Of survival. The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult. Before the people of the world -- let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth... and the value of a single human being."
-- Judge Dan Haywood, Judgment at Nuremberg "Chance favors the prepared mind."
-- Louis Pasteur "We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
-- James D. Nicoll "Isn't it interesting... religious behaviour is so close to being crazy that we can't tell them apart."
-- House, House "It's really a coward's version of philosophy; instead of seeking to improve mankind's understanding of any given subject, the solipsist seeks only the comfort and security of knowing that he has a ready-made rebuttal for any criticism of his position."
-- Michael Wong "In the long run, anger and hatred are self defeating emotions, but in the short run they pay high dividends in the form of psychological and even physiological satisfaction"
-- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited "Sure it does, because anything which is a choice is a perfectly legitimate reason for discrimination and persecution. Like religion. Oops!"
-- Michael Wong, in response to the following: "Does it matter if it's a 'choice' in the first place?" "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
-- Pat Moynihan "Most of the Religious Right feels that 'religious freedom' means 'I can do anything and everything I want to as long as it's related to my religion, and there should be no consequences whatsoever'. This guy's attitude is not surprising at all; what's most disturbing is the sheer number of people who subscribe to this idiot mentality."
-- Michael Wong "I was actually threatened with suspension from another forum once because I accused a white supremacist of being a hatemonger. Apparently, it is not 'hatemongering' to have 'pride in your racial heritage', as long as you only call for deporting minorities instead of killing them outright.

But realistically, all white supremacists are vicious hatemongers; their whole ideology is based on fear and hate, and they only try to cover it up with rhetoric. Their apologists always act surprised when something like this happens, as if their movement had nothing to do with it."
-- Michael Wong "We're all too comfortable. Material comfort brings complacency and a reluctance to get off your ass and do something."
-- Michael Wong "Solipism is to real philosophy what stamping out of the room yelling at the top of your lungs is to moderated debating. It's a refusal to engage, it's throwing a fit.

It is, as I've oft noted, the angsty teenager form of Sophism."
-- Martin Kemmish "It should be noted that religion claims to explain why we are here, the meaning of life, etc, but it doesn't. It doesn't even really try. All it does is punt off those questions to a 'higher plane' without answering them.

Why are we here, according to Christianity? Because God put us here, which begs the question of why God is here. What is the meaning of life, according to Christianity? To live our lives in a Godly manner so that we may eventually be with God in Heaven, which begs the question of what the meaning of God's life is. These are not answers; they are simply delaying tactics."
-- Michael Wong "Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live."
-- Norman Cousins "I saw 'concentration test for men' and I figured I shouldn't open it at work."
-- Avezes "Ask these people if you can blame Nazism for the Holocaust and see how strictly they adhere to this idiotic idea that systems of belief are completely blameless in the behavior of their followers."
-- Damien Sorresso "We can know all sorts of facts about geology or astronomy or biology, but if we don’t understand how those facts were ascertained and demonstrated, our minds will remain linked with those of our primitive ancestors who let themselves be led by common sense into all manner of errors and superstitions. Scientific literacy is the key to enlightenment."
-- Richard Carrier, "Test Your Scientific Literacy!" "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
-- Thomas Jefferson "We need more truths. How are we supposed to make realistic decisions about the direction of our country when people re-write the past to make it sounds awesome? They'll swing the ship around, and run us through the same goddamn minefields that drove us in this direction to begin with!"
-- Covenant "And yet certain kinds of speech are already illegal, such as slander, death threats, harassment, fraud, and anything deemed 'obscene'. In many parts of the United States, speech is arguably less free than it is in Germany; the difference is that it targets people for having sex instead of attacking minorities. The idea that you must either have totally unrestricted speech or a rapid slide into totalitarianism is nonsense. What you do need is one particular protected form of speech, and that would be criticism of the government."
-- Michael Wong "So inciting attacks on minorities should be OK until the attacks actually occur? Why? Why don't we also make it OK to send death threats until the victim is actually murdered?"
-- Michael Wong "That's retarded. How the fuck are you supposed to 'ignore' some asshole who's protesting the funeral of your loved ones? You sound exactly like the limp-wristed people who tell victims of bullying to 'just ignore it'."
-- Michael Wong "Religious fundamentalism does not draw upon sources external to itself for its premises. The premises of science are empirical observations; regardless of whether you believe that objective reality is in fact real, you cannot deny that objective reality is a wholly separate entity from science itself, and was certainly not created by science. Religious texts, on the other hand, are created by members of that religion, even if those members lived thousands of years ago. In that sense, religion is an intellectually incestuous philosophy; it begets its own premises. All of religion is naught but a gigantic circular logic fallacy."
-- Michael Wong "... a mind forever / Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone."
-- William Wordsworth, some of his well-known lines on the statue of Newton in the Antechapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. "They don't seem to realize that once they're elected to govern, they're supposed to govern for the benefit of the whole country, not just the part that voted for them."
-- Michael Wong "You just stood your ground against a crazy beast. And even more impressive, you stood your ground against me."
-- Toph, "Bitter Work", Avatar: The Last Airbender "Perhaps more to the point, science relies upon outside data for its premises. Whether you accept that the universe is real or not (and one must reiterate that anyone who seriously denies the existence of objective reality is just arguing for the sake of arguing), the fact is that the universe was obviously not created by science. Therefore, observations of the universe are external to science, ergo science is a logical construct which uses data external to itself as its premises.

Religion, on the other hand, creates its own premises. Its Scriptures, its testimonies, its revelations ... 100% of it is created by members of the religion. The entire enterprise is wholly circular; you cannot find a piece of religious 'evidence' which was not created by a person belonging to that religion.

Even if we accept his argument that you can judge an ideology by the imperfection of its human authors, religion is still inferior to science."
-- Michael Wong "Hubris softens the earth beneath the feet of victory."
-- Byakuya, Bleach "The problem with the 'everything is uncertain' type of argument is, of course, that not everything is uncertain to the same degree. I suppose he could then claim that the relative amount of uncertainty is uncertain, and so on ad nauseum, but the real issue is that both science and logic provide verifiable and repeatable results. Don't let him treat the issue of not being 'fully certain' with more importance than it deserves--it's not a question of what's absolutely perfect, but what's the best we have available."
-- Stan Liou "Thomas Jefferson tried to address that problem. His 'Jeffersonian Bible', which I think he meant (or hoped) to be the basis for an American Deism-based religion, deleted the Old Testament, everything in the New Testament after the Gospels, at least one of those Gospels, and combined the remainder while deleting the miracles, and it ends with Jesus being buried. No resurrection. It instead concentrated on Jesus the teacher, recasting him as a sort of Judaic Lao-Tse. Didn't take, of course. Religion based on Reason apparently isn't part of the American Way(TM)."
-- Patrick Degan "Being afraid of something is not necessarily irrational, as long as that thing is dangerous. The real question is whether the amount of fear is even vaguely proportional to the amount of danger.

A good example: I've known people who refuse to use Teflon-coated cooking pans because they've heard that tiny amounts of CFCs can be released by them. Meanwhile, they smoke cigarettes every day. This is an example of an irrational fear, not because the Teflon thing is totally unfounded (it might have a factual basis), but because they obviously have no sense of proportion about it.

Similarly, fear of heights is not irrational; it is quite true that if you fall from a high place, you're liable to be hurt or killed. But if that fear manifests itself even in situations where the risk is controlled, then you're being irrational."
-- Michael Wong "...if my extensive porno library has taught me anything, it's that even the most infirm hospital patients can be fully capable of rigorous sexual activity the moment a hot nurse enters the room."
-- Michael Wong "Too bad Jon [Stewart] never used my favourite rebuttal to the 'We can't allow gay marriage because that will lead to polygamy' argument, which is: 'We can't allow Biblical marriage because that could lead to polygamy.'"
-- Michael Wong "The bit where they showed Bush saying 'America is the land of freedom where you can realize your opportunities and express yourself freely' and then cutting to Stewart saying, 'And that's why I want to ban gays from getting married' was absolutely brilliant."
-- Damien Sorresso, about The Daily Show aired on June 6, 2006 "I felt the burn an hour ago. Now it's searing pain."
-- Maddie Fitzpatrick, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody "Wow, people declaring that we must replace the Public School System with Private ones. You see, like most Libertarian turds, this one's already been floated and flushed: Public school is new, historically speaking. It's rise is also akin to a general rise in the knowledge of the layperson, economic prosperity, and scientific advancement.

But what do we know, right? That's just history talking, actual reality against the Unstoppable Libertarian Wank-Fantasy."
-- Martin Kemmish "Whatever your system is, be consistent with it. The worst thing some parents do is adopt an inconsistent system of discipline, where the severity of the punishment has more to do with whether Daddy had a good day at the office than the severity of the offense."
-- Michael Wong "I got spanked, slapped and put in the corner. Apparently I deserved it. But my dad was more of a Tarkin Doctrine kind of guy, fear of force over force itself. Reminds me of Adam Ferrara's bit about his father yelling at him and his brother. 'Lemme tell you a story kids. Your mother wanted 2 kids, but we had 3 because I knew the day would come when I'd have to kill one of you.'

Eventually, it got to the point where I could recognize my mom's 'Go stand in the corner' tone of voice and would just act accordingly without being told. We were at a wedding once and she called out my name just to get me to come over for a picture or something, but I thought I had done something wrong. So I found the nearest corner and stood in it.

She just left me there for a while. Cruel woman."
-- Damien Sorresso "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, / Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit / Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, / Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."
-- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam "As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, wish my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as part of his duty, the words, 'If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me.... I could have laughed with scorn. What! Because I am face to face with death and irreparable loss, because I have given back to the same source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness... I am to renounce my manhood, and howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grief [sic] out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge....

If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim on the love of those around me, if in the supreme moment when I looked down into my boy's grave my sorrow was full of submission and without bitterness, it is...not because I have ever cared whether my poor personality shall remain distinct for ever from the All from whence it came and whither it goes....

I know right well that 99 out of 100 of my fellows would call me atheist, infidel, and all the other usual hard names. As our laws stand, if the lowest thief steals my coat, my evidence (my opinions being known) would not be received against him.*

But I cannot help it. One thing people shall not call me with justice and that is--a liar. As you say of yourself, I too feel that I lack courage; but if ever the occasion arises when I am bound to speak, I will not shame my boy."
-- Thomas Huxley, responding to the pious but open-minded Episcopal clergyman and author Charles Kingsley who suggested to the grieving father who had just lost his beloved three-year-old son who died unexpectedly in 1860 that he would derive spiritual comfort if he could only bring himself to believe in some form of life beyond the grave. It is quoted by Susan Jacoby in Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, Chapter 5: "Evolution and Its Discontents" (pages 146-47)

*England, like many American states (but unlike the U.S. government, with its constitutional provision banning religious tests for any "public trust"), prohibited those who refused to take an oath on the Bible from testifying in court. "In the end, morality is based upon the simple human emotion of sympathy for others, and the rest is window-dressing. That's why the parts of the Bible which ring most true for moralists are the parts where Jesus or God shows his mercy rather than his anger."
-- Michael Wong "The morality of my people was a little different from the Head Hunters of Borneo, yet we had a similar rule that said that it wasn't right to steal. This rule was never given by a god. It was a result of rationality in species who understood that stealing could never be allowed in structured societies. Prides of lions have the same rule. It became apparent that the greatest morality was not to do right for the bribe of a reward (Heaven), or because of the threat of punishment (Hell), but to do right for right's sake. This, to me, sums up higher morality. Morality comes no more to man from a god than it does from a god to a baboon to sacrifice himself to the leopard to preserve the lives of his troop."
-- Joe Holman, "My Early Years" "I would deem a race that comes to fruition through it's own efforts to be infinitely more valuable and impressive than a race that is created, protected, and educated by some supernatural, intergalactic nanny. Indeed, the former race would be mighty, and the latter would be weak."
-- Brad Johnson "Animals kill each other all the time--only in smaller numbers because they're dumb as shit and can't conjure up the technology or coordinate their numbers in ways necessary to wipe out their enemies. They are as easily killers as mankind. They kill their own number, their prey, and even their predators if they can manage it. And you'd better believe that if a crapload of zebra evolved the brains to build an atom bomb, they would nuke the fucking lions to ash."
-- Brad Johnson, responding to the following: "I don't see many animals commiting attrocities and crimes against nature." "Morality is part of human nature and...an effective adaptation. Why should we forego morality any more than we should put out our eyes?"
-- Michael Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously (page 253) "...Bellamy, a former Baptist minister, had been driven from his Boston pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism (a biographical note never mentioned by right-wing pledge worshipers today). As a Baptist and a socialist, Bellamy believed in absolute seperation of church and state: he would surely have been horrified by the addition of 'under God' to the pledge in 1954, at the height of the McCarthy era. The pledge was intended as a straightforward statement of the American public school system's commitment to assimilation of all immigrants--'one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' It was recited primarily in public schools until the First World War, when Catholic educators, originally suspicious of the pledge's secular intent, decided that the words, even without a nod to the deity, could do no harm and would help demonstrate the Americanism of American Catholics."
-- Susan Jacoby, Chapter 9: "Onward, Christian Soldiers", Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism "Keller and Marian Breland, students of the psychologist B.F. Skinner, became professional animal trainers. They used the techniques of operant conditioning to induce raccoons, roosters, pigs and other animals to perform curious and novel acts such as depositing coins in piggy bank for a display in a bank window or playing a modified form of ping pong. Occasionally however, the animals refused to cooperate: roosters made scratching movements with their feet, pigs snuffled incongruously on the bare floor, and the raccoons refused to deposit their coins, preferring instead to rub them between their paws in a manner most inappropriate to the inspiration of the future savings account depositors. These animals had been trained by reinforcing them with food; however when they were made hungry in an effort to eliminate the unwanted behaviors, the behaviors actually increased. The Brelands finally attributed these failures to the occasional surfacing of instinctive behaviors, adaptive aspects of each species' evolutionary past that could not be thwarted entirely, even by sophisticated techniques of modern animal psychology...Thus scratching with the feet, snuffling with the nose, and rubbing with the hands are evolved food-getting behavior patterns that are characteristic of chickens, pigs, and raccoons, respectively."
-- David P. Barash, Sociobiology and Behavior (page 36) "[S]elective breeding over a few generations can produce populations of crickets most of whose males sing for many hours each night (if persistent singers are chosen as breeding stock) or populations whose males generally remain silent the whole night long (if only weak singers are permitted to reproduce). Likewise, you can select for active or inactive fruit flies, or one can create fly populations whose members move toward or away from light."
-- Alcock, The Triumph of Sociobiology (page 49) "A chimpanzee stroking and patting a victim of attack or sharing her food with a hungry companion shows attitudes that are hard to distinguish from those of a person picking up a crying child, or doing volunteer work in a soup kitchen. To classify the chimpanzee's behavior as based on instinct and the person's behavior as proof of moral decency is misleading, and probably incorrect. First of all it is uneconomic in that it assumes different processes for similar behavior in two closely related species. Second it ignores the growing body of evidence for mental complexity in the chimpanzee including the possibility of empathy. I hesitate to call the members of any species other than our own "moral beings", yet I also believe that many of the sentiments and cognitive abilities underlying human morality antedate the appearance of our species on this planet."
-- Frans de Waal, Good Natured (page 210) "Is the holy loved by gods because it is holy? Or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?"
-- Socrates, as quoted in Dialogues of Plato (p. 53) by Erich Segal "Anyone with any sibling in any culture is familiar with the empathy for a sibling in great need, the sense of fulfillment of giving aid, the guilt at not giving it. Anyone who has endured a sibling’s death is familiar with grief. These people who know what love is, and they have kin selection to thank for it."
-- Frank Miele, "The (Im)moral Animal", Skeptic, Vol 4 No.1 1996 p42-49
Robert Wright, op. cit. (page 161) "Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice -- all of those things that hold society together -- can now be confidently be said to have a firm genetic basis."
-- Robert Wright, The Moral Animal "Morality evolved... as a form of social control, conflict resolution and group cohesion."
-- Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil "That we feel moral compulsion as ought, not just as a preference, is also embedded in the logic of our evolved genes. For example we do not feel incest is just something we ourselves dislike but we feel strongly that it is wrong, for everyone. The strong innate biological drive to copulate with a member of the opposite sex is strong and can only be neutered by a stronger, and equally biological, sense of ought to steer us away from it."
-- Paul N. Tobin, "Evolution and the Origins of Morality", The Rejection of Pascal's Wager, http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/evolpsych.html "Neither regarding human sentiments caused by kin selection nor regarding human sentiments caused by reciprocal altruism, is the Darwinian claim that we humans know wherein lie our biological ends. The person who helped another, consciously intending to promote his own biological advantage, would not be moral. He would be crazy. The Darwinian's point is that our moral sense is a biological adaptation, just like hands and feet. We think in terms of right and wrong. It just so happens that the overall effects are biological."
-- Michael Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously "When we behave morally we are not pretending to be moral, we are being moral. Evolution have embedded this in us for economical reasons: it is easier to be moral than to pretend to be moral."
-- Paul N. Tobin, "Evolution and the Origins of Morality", The Rejection of Pascal's Wager: A Skeptic's Guide To Christianity "It is not enough to fake doing the right thing in order to fool our fellow group members, because although we are fairly good deceivers, we are also fairly good deception detectors. We cannot fool all the people all the time, and we do learn to assess (through gossip, in part) who is trustworthy and who is not trustworthy, so it is better to actually be a moral person because that way you actually believe it yourself and thus there is no need for deception. What I am saying is that the best way to convince others that you are a moral person is not to fake being a moral person but to actually be a moral person. Don't just go through the motions of being moral..., actually be moral. It is my contention that this is how moral sentiments evolved in our Paleolithic ancestors living in small communities."
-- Michael Shermer "History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again."
-- Carl Sagan "Only a creationist would be so absurd as to complain that scientists restrict their study to the entire goddamn physical universe."
-- P.Z. Myers, "Creationist lies in the Pioneer Press" "I believe it's important that those with the essential qualifications exercise their talents in pursuit of the truth."
-- Clavius.org "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
-- Suzan Ertz, as quoted in "the Skeptic" v.24 #2 p.60 "We acknowledge but one motive -- to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but in our heart of hearts we are well assured that the truth which has made us free, will in the end make us glad also."
-- Mortimer Adler, The Adler Archives "But virtue's true reward is happiness itself, for which the virtuous work, whereas if they worked for honour, it would no longer be virtue, but ambition."
-- Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologica" "No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine."
-- A. J. Ayer, "Essay on Humanism" "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."
-- Francis Bacon, "Advancement of Learning" "Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and imbibed opinions, but generally according to custom."
-- Francis Bacon, "Essays" "And generally let every student of nature take this as a rule -- that whatever the mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken in dealing with such questions to keep the understanding even and clear."
-- Francis Bacon, "Novum Organum" "There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth, which hinder every man, however learned, and scarcely allow any one to win a clear title to learning, namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge."
-- Roger Bacon, "Opus Majus" "Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Admonition: Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe. Friendly warning."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Bore: a person who talks when you wish him to listen."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Caaba: A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Clairvoyant: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a blockhead."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Miracle: An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Obstinate: Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy. The popular type and exponent of obstinacy is the mule, a most intelligent animal."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Omen: A sign that something will happen if nothing happens."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "A credulous mind...finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such."
-- Samuel Butler, "Characters" "A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it.... Skepticism is the first step toward truth."
-- Denis Diderot, "Philosophical Thoughts" "Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
-- Thomas Henry Huxley, letter to Charles Kingsley, September 23, 1860 "I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
-- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It "I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true."
-- Bertrand Russell, "On the Value of Scepticism" "...Innumerable other gentlemen now discovered that they could defeat whatever they wanted to defeat by tarring it conspicuously with the Bolshevist brush. Big-navy men, believers in compulsory military service, drys, anti-cigarette campaigners, anti-evolution Fundamentalists, defenders of the moral order, book censors, Jew-haters, Negro-haters, landlords, manufacturers, utility executives, upholders of every sort of cause, good, bad, and indifferent, all wrapped themselves in Old Glory and the mantle of the Founding Fathers and allied their opponents with Lenin."
-- Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday (New York, 1959), pp. 48-49. "You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman.... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage....

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth [sic] century -- Augustine's idea -- that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the preisthood?"
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, pp. 60-61. "...I would rather belong to that race that commenced a skull-less vertebrate and produced Shakespeare, a race that has before it an infinite future, with the angel of progress beckoning forward, upward and onward forever -- I had rather belong to such a race, commencing there, producing this, and with that hope, than to have sprung from a perfect pair upon which the Lord has lost money every moment from that day to this."
-- Robert Ingersoll, Works, vol. 1, pp 394-95. "[The Constitution of the United States] was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands."
-- James Madison, March 10, 1834, as quoted at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration's website "Strive, dear Zilkov, to cultivate a sense of humor."
-- Dr. Pen Lo, The Manchurian Candidate "I beheld a middle aged African raised and exposed on one of the stalls in the shambles of Philadelphia market at Public Sale, as a Slave for life! And this is the capital of Pennsylvania, a land high in the profession of Liberty and Christianity."
-- Colonist quoted in Pennsylvania Packet, a Philadelphia newspaper, February 7, 1774, as quoted at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration's website "Can't help fools."
-- Sanjuro, Yojimbo "There are 'coffee-klatch' forums OUT THERE where such can all sing 'That Girl is Mine' together and congratulate themselves at how tolerant they are of intolerant people and utter nonsense."
-- J.D./Doctor X "Gentlemen do not concern themselves with the threats and protestations of cowards. Gentlemen will, of course, protect the Noble Readership from the malignant intentions of cowards."
-- J.D./Doctor X "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
-- The U.S. Constitution, Amendment IX "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
-- The U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIII "...at any rate, claming 'God' can refer to Hindu dieties, Buddah, Wiccan spirits, and the athiest self-determinist man (as I've heard some argue) is an insult to everyone's intelligence."
-- RedImperator "Look at the context under which it was added, genius. If a Christian organization campaigned for its insertion, you can bet that it wasn't put there for the purpose of respecting all religions. Aside from that, the God of Christians, Muslims and Jews isn't the god of Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, et cetera. Therefore, all those establishments are disrespected.

I love this argument of, 'Congress can respect establishments of religion as long as it tries to respect all of them.' Bull-fucking-shit. The Constitution says that no religious establishment can be respected. It sets a lower limit, not an upper limit. If I said, 'You can't kill a person,' would you infer that it's acceptable for you to kill more than one person?"
-- Damien Sorresso, in response to an assertion made in regards to the "under God" portion of the Pledge "As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin."
-- Thomas Paine, "Of the Religion of Deism Compared with the Christian Religion" "...Deism influenced, in one way or another, most of the political leaders who designed the new American government. Since the founding fathers did not hold identical views on religion, they should not be lumped together. But if census takers trained in Christian theology had set up broad categories in 1790 labeled 'Atheism,' 'Deism and Unitarianism,' 'Orthodox Protestantism,' 'Orthodox Roman Catholicism,' and 'Other,' and if they had interviewed Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, they would undoubtedly have placed every one of these six founding fathers in the same way under the category of 'Deism and Unitarianism.'"
-- David L. Holmes, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (pages 50-51) "By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out."
-- Richard Dawkins, "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder"; The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television (12 November 1996) "My last vestige of 'hands off religion' respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th 2001, followed by the 'National Day of Prayer,' when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place."
-- Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain "Is it odd, is it curious, is it puzzling? It is exactly as I have said, incredible as it may sound. This sincere adorer of intellect and prodigal rewarder of its mighty services here in the earth has invented a religion and a heaven which pay no compliments to intellect, offer it no distinctions, fling it no largess: in fact, never even mention it."
-- Mark Twain, Letters From The Earth "The Church still prizes the Moral Sense as man's noblest asset today, although the Church knows God had a distinctly poor opinion of it and did what he could in his clumsy way to keep his happy Children of the Garden from acquiring it."
-- Mark Twain, Letters From The Earth "The Lord [Buddha] replied to the Venerable Sariputra:
In some village, city, market town, country district, province, kingdom, or capital there lived a householder, old, advanced in years, decrepit, weak in health and strength, but rich, wealthy, and well-to-do. His house was a large one, both extensive and high, and it was old, having been built a long time ago. It was inhabited by many living beings, some two, three, four, or five hundred. It had one single door only. It was thatched with straw, its terraces had fallen down, its foundations were rotten, its walls, matting-screens, and plaster were in an advanced state of decay. Suddenly a great blaze of fire broke out, and the house started burning on all sides. And that man had many young sons, five, or ten, or twenty, and he himself got out of the house.
When that man saw his own house ablaze all around with that great mass of fire, he became afraid and trembled, his mind became agitated, and he thought to himself: 'I, it is true, have been competent enough to run out of the door, and to escape from my burning house, quickly and safely, without being touched or scorched by that great mass of fire. But what about my sons, my young boys, my little sons? There, in this burning house, they play, sport, and amuse themselves with all sorts of games. They do not know that this dwelling is afire, they do not understand it, do not perceive it, pay no attention to it, and so they feel no agitation. Though threatened by this great [fire], though in such close contact with so much ill, they pay no attention to their danger, and make no efforts to get out.'"
-- from The Saddharmapundarika, in Buddhist Scriptures. Edward Conze, ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1959) "We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free."
-- Epictetus (Roman philosopher and former slave), Discourses "I assert most unhestitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes -- a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaverholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me...I...hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land."
-- Frederick Douglass, Autobiographies: Narrative of a Life, My Bondage & My Freedom, Life and Times, Henry L. Gates, Jr., ed. (New York: Library of America, 1994); quoted in The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. "[Slavery] fetters your progress, it is the enemy of improvement; the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds indolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse of the earth that supports it, and yet you cling to it as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes."
-- Frederick Douglass, Autobiographies: Narrative of a Life, My Bondage & My Freedom, Life and Times, Henry L. Gates, Jr., ed. (New York: Library of America, 1994); quoted in The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. "We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling."
-- Henri Poincare (1854-1912), as quoted in The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. "Under the pressure of the American environment, Christianity grew more humanistic and temperate -- more tolerant with the struggle of the sects, more liberal with the growth of optimism and rationalism, more experimental with the rise of science, more individualistic with the advent of democracy. Equally important, increasing numbers of colonists, as a legion of preachers loudly lamented, were turning secular in curiosity and skeptical in attitude."
-- Clinton Lawrence Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953). Excerpted in Rossiter, The First American Revolution (San Diego: Harvest). "The twin doctrines of seperation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man."
-- Clinton Lawrence Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953). Excerpted in Rossiter, The First American Revolution (San Diego: Harvest). "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."
-- an old adage "All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have."
-- Albert Einstein "I Am Therefore I Think."
-- Sum Ergo Cogito "[A]s children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror..."
-- Lucretius, On The Nature of Things (ca. 60 B.C.) "[M]agic, it must be remembered, is an art which demands collaboration between an artist and his public."
-- E.M. Butler, The Myth of the Magus (1948) "The human understanding is no dry light, but receives infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called 'sciences as one would.' For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinions of the vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which affections color and infect the understanding."
-- Francis Bacon, "Novum Organon" "A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refited, even though this should put him to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms, that it was idle to suppose that she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.
What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerety of his conviction can in nowise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts..."
-- William K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief (1874) "Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth."
-- Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (1929) "[E]very time a savage tracks his game he employs a minuteness of observation, and an accuracy of inductive and deductive reasoning which, applied in other matters, would assure some reputation as a man of science... [T]he intellectual labour of a 'good hunter or warrior' considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman."
-- Thomas H. Huxley, Collected Essays, Volume II, Darwiniana: Essays (London: Macmillan, 1907), pp. 175-6 [from "Mr. Darwin's Critics" (1871)] Tiberius: "I will make you my successor, Gaius Caligula. Rome deserves you."
Caligula: "Is that a joke, uncle?"
Tiberius: "Not yet, but it will be."
-- I, Claudius Sam: "How's life treating you, Norm?"
Norm: "Like it caught me sleeping with its wife."
-- Cheers Paul: "Hey Norm, how's the world been treating you?"
Norm: "Like a baby treats a diaper."
-- Cheers "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been!'"
-- John Greenleaf Whittier "I never fucked anybody over in my life, who didn't have it comin' to him, you got that? All I have in this world is my balls, and my word, and I don't break 'em for no one."
-- Tony Montana, Scarface "I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?"
-- Clint Eastwood as Insp. Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry "Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valour pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to Hell with you!"
-- Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan in Conan the Barbarian (1982) "I don't listen to hip-hop."
-- General from South Park, on if he'd ever heard of the Emancipation Proclamation. "Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian."
-- Denis Diderot "I have no need of that hypothesis."
-- Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827), French mathematician and astronomer, when asked why his books make no mention of God "Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because it is hurtful."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack "...serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought an easier service and therefore is more generally chosen."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack "Isn't it funny how the most unprincipled scum in our political system are the very people who speak most loudly about 'values'?"
-- Michael Wong "The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
-- George Bernard Shaw "I am so sick of the word 'inappropriate'. People like this know that they can't back up words like 'harmful' or 'destructive', so they use a word like 'inappropriate' which means it is really nothing more than a social faux pas. But people seem to forget what a mild criticism the word 'inappropriate' is, and they think it means 'that which cannot be allowed'. The beauty of it from the perspective of the puritans is that it has no real definition, other than the fact that people don't like it."
-- Michael Wong "What's particularly obnoxious is that they will insult you to your face in every conceivable way, say that you're scum of the Earth and causing the downfall of society, and that's OK. But if you say their beliefs are stupid, you're banned. Because personal attacks aren't allowed."
-- Michael Wong, adding his input in response to the following post: "Yeah, it is a parenting/pregnancy board. It's really depressing to see women talking about how everyone who doesn't accept Jesus will be damned to hell for all eternity. On one board, they are giving advice about how to get your baby to sleep or how to make homemade baby food. On another board, they are telling you that you and your kids are eternally damned..." "...I think it's interesting to examine the mindset of the child abuse apologist. Unless someone is literally beating his child in public, how do you know whether he uses physical punishment? Do you walk up and ask him? Not likely. So the child abuse meme becomes self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing: when they see a bratty kid they assume his parents never use physical punishment on him, without inquiring to see whether this is truly the case. When they see a well-behaved kid they assume that his parents liberally used physical punishment to make him behave. And so every time they see a bratty kid or a well-behaved kid, they believe they are seeing more supporting evidence for their hypothesis.

The funny thing is that, as long as we're talking about personal anecdotes rather than the studies which are pretty much uniformly against the practice, I have observed that the few times I do see someone hitting his kid in public (thus proving beyond any doubt that this person uses physical punishment), the kid is rather bratty."
-- Michael Wong "One question I'd have to ask proponents of capital punishment is whether they hit their kids when they're completely calm, or whether they do it in a moment of anger. If you hit your kid in a moment of anger, are you doing it because it is part of a logical child-rearing plan, or because you're angry? If you give yourself a cooldown period and then contemplate the idea of hitting your kid, does it still seem like a good idea?

If you're much more likely to do something when you're angry, it only makes sense that the action is motivated by your emotional state rather than the logical bullshit justifications you make up afterwards in order to explain your actions."
-- Michael Wong "...We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular."
-- Edward R. Murrow, See it Now (CBS-TV, March 9, 1954), "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy" "What a vivid imagination my brother has. At age five, he was able to deduce, through careful observation of the neighbours, that babies were brought not by the stork but rather by the midwife. In her satchel."
-- Mycroft Holmes, The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (1970) "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 "The principal framers of the American political system wanted no religious parties in national politics. They crafted a constitutional order that intended to make a person's religious convictions, or his lack of religious convictions, irrelevant in judging the value of his political opinion or in assessing his qualifications to hold political office."
-- Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 23. "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. "Scientific hypotheses are always tentative; they are designed to be held only so long as they conform to the evidence. Proponents of the theistic hypothesis, on the other hand, are already sure that their hypothesis is correct; the only seek evidence to buttress a foregone conclusion."
-- Keith Parsons, "Is There a Case for Christian Theism?" Does God Exist? (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1991), p. 190. "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. Father Cornelo: "You are damned.... May the wrath of God fall upon your head."
Edward Elric: "Stop hiding behind that crap! Get down here and I'll show you some wrath!"
-- "Body of the Sanctioned", Full Metal Alchemist Rose: "What do I have to live for? You tell me that, Ed!"
Edward: You'll have to find that out on your own. Move forward. You've got a good strong pair of legs, Rose. I suggest you use them."
-- "Body of the Sanctioned", Full Metal Alchemist "Damn it, there are so many idiots whose asses I have to kick! I'll have to start carrying a list just to keep track of 'em all!"
-- Edward, "Sealing the Homoculus", Full Metal Alchemist "But nothing's ever perfect, haven't you realized that yet? Earth turns on a tilted axis, doing the best it can."
-- Hohenheim, "Laws and Promises", Full Metal Alchemist "Elitism about anything you've directly or indirectly inherited is arguably a bad thing because it's so grossly unfair to people who did not inherit those things, hence the bad connotations of historical elitism. Elitism about individual achievement, however (and completion of a difficult education is certainly an individual achievement), is almost certainly a good thing.

When people attack elitism as if all forms of elitism are bad, they're actually attacking the entire concept of meritocracy without realizing it.

Of course, one could argue that intelligence is inherited, so smart people shouldn't look down on dumb people. There is some merit to that argument from a social sympathy point of view, but for the purposes of decision-making, one should most definitely look down on the unintelligent, and what is politics and voting but decision-making? Besides, even an intelligent person has to work hard to complete a difficult education. Stupidity is as much a state of mind as a genetic trait."
-- Michael Wong "Part of the problem is that they know well-educated people think poorly educated people are stupid. So they bristle at the perception and lash out defensively. The problem is that they outnumber the well-educated people, so their anger and resentment can become a major political force, actually reaching the point where public policy decisions are made in defiance of what the most qualified people have to say about them.

That's why a scientist is admired until he starts telling people they're wrong about a matter of science. That's his job and he is qualified to do precisely that, but stupid people hate someone reminding them of what they are. So they get angry at him and bash him for being 'close-minded' and 'elitist'.

The reason they don't do this to ministers is that the minister is only claiming to be a representative of a much bigger power, and they don't do it to the bigger power because they're afraid of him. Ministers are constantly telling people what's wrong, what not to do, etc. But they have that outside authority, whereas a scientist has only superior education and intelligence at his disposal, rather than irrational fear."
-- Michael Wong "Unsatisfied curiosity is nagging, and there is a sense of comfort and relief when it's satisfied. Carl Sagan related how dissatisfied people were when he answered that he did not know whether there were extraterrestrial civilizations. People kept pressing him 'But what do you think?' The ability to accept uncertainty requires extraordinary intellectual discipline. Medieval maps were full of spurious details simply because their makers couldn't tolerate blank spaces. There is abundant evidence that most people prefer the appearance of immediate certainty to the existence of uncertainty, even if uncertainty carries with it the certainty of getting closer to the truth later. Many people prefer religions that promise theological certainty, even if based on demonstrably spurious reasoning, rather than a religion that reasons soundly but accepts uncertainty or ambiguity. Having acquired a feeling of certainty, people naturally resist any attempt to re-open inquiry, because it will require effort and because it will subject them anew to that nagging feeling of uncertainty."
-- Steven Dutch, "Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?" "In a world where the best you can hope for is survival and maybe a little comfort, any change is almost certainly bound to be for the worse. Anyone growing up in such a world will develop a strong belief in 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' The notion that change is desirable and beneficial is a very recent one born of our technological mastery of nature."
-- Steven Dutch, "Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?" "Humans are innately curious, but it is mostly a low order curiosity concerned with immediate gratification of a particular desire to know, and mostly oriented toward immediate practical results."
-- Steven Dutch, "Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?" "Our own culture supports systematic and disciplined inquiry better than just about any other in history, but even so there is a great deal of hostility toward it by people who feel their values threatened, see it as a waste of time that could be better devoted to more immediate goals, or resent the status and power it carries."
-- Steven Dutch, "Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?" "Aren't you embarrassed by your level of knowledge?"
-- Ishida, ch. 243, "The Knuckle & The Arrow" (Ju-Ni translation), Bleach "How rare, men with the character to praise / a friend's success without a trace of envy."
-- Aeschylus, Agamemnon "He can fit his sails to every wind."
-- John Clarke, comp., Proverbs: English and Latine, p. 282 "The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators."
-- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distant target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. In real life, the criterion for selection is always short-term, either simple survival or, more generally, reproductive success. If, after the aeons, what looks like progress towards some distant goal seems, with hindsight, to have been achieved, this is always an incidental consequence of many generations of short-term selection. The 'watchmaker' that is cumulative natural selection is blind to the future and has no long-term goal."
-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why The Evidence of Evolution Reveals A Universe Without Design, p. 72 "My father, the Padishah Emperor, took me by the hand one day and I sensed in the ways my mother had taught me that he was disturbed. He led me down the Hall of Portraits to the ego-likeness of the Duke Leto Atreides. I marked the strong resemblance between them -- my father and this man in the portrait -- both with thin, elegant faces and sharp features dominated by cold eyes. 'Princess-daughter,' my father said, 'I would that you'd been older when it came time for this man to choose a woman.' My father was 71 at the time and looking no older than the man in the portrait, and I was but 14, yet I remember deducing in that instant that my father secretly wished the Duke had been his son, and disliked the political necessities that made them enemies."
-- "In My Father's House" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert, p. 105 "There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man -- with human flesh."
-- "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert, p. 102 "Over the exit of the Arakeen landing field, crudely carved as though with a poor instrument, there was an inscription that Muad'Dib was to repeat many times. He saw it that first night on Arrakis, having been brought to the ducal command post to participate in his father's first full staff conference. The words of the inscription were a plea to those leaving Arrakis, but they fell with dark import on the eyes of a boy who had just escaped a close brush with death. They said: 'O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers.'"
-- "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert, p. 82 "At the age of fifteen, he has already learned silence."
-- "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert, p. 241 "There is a legend that the instant the Duke Leto Atreides died a meteor streaked across the skies above his ancestral palace on Caladan."
-- "Introduction to A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert, p. 175 "You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox communitity. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic."
-- "Muad'Dib: The Religious Issues" by the Princess Irulan, in Dune by Frank Herbert, p. 401 "Do you not think I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable?"
-- Julius Caesar, remark to his friends who, during a military campaign in Spain, were surprised to see him burst into tears after reading Alexander's exploits, in Plutarch, "Caesar", Parallel Lives, Dryden edition, 1693 "If I had not had so much ambition and had not tried to do so many things, I probably would have been happier, but less useful."
-- Thomas Edison, The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison "Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others."
-- Machiavelli, The Discourses "I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn."
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Winter Animals", Walden "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
-- Francis Bacon, "Of Studies", Essays "When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?"
-- George Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms, D.66, 1806, tr. R.J. Hollingdale, 1990 "Familiarity with danger makes a brave man braver, but less daring."
-- Herman Melville, White Jacket, 23, 1850 "Blame is most readily averted by being so much like everybody else that one passes unnoticed."
-- John Dewey, introduction to Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology, 1922 "A bore is a person not interested in you."
-- Mary Pettibone Poole, "Narcissus Was a Woman", A Glass Eye at a Keyhole, 1938 "If these emotions [i.e., fear, rage or anxiety] are kept at a high pitch of intensity for a long enough time, the brain goes 'on strike.' When this happens, new behavior patterns may be installed with the greatest of ease."
-- Aldous Huxley, "Brainwashing", Brave New World Revisited "The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent. Each of them tacitly claims that 'the truth' has already been revealed, and that the heretic, if he is not simply a fool, is secretly aware of 'the truth' and merely resists it out of selfish motives."
-- George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature", January 1946, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 4, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 1968 "The high sentiments always win in the end; the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic."
-- George Orwell, "The Art of Donald McGill", Sept. 1941, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 2, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 1968 "The success of an insult depends upon the sensitiveness and the indignation of the victim."
-- Seneca the Younger, "On the Firmness of the Wise Man" (17.4), Moral Essays, tr. John W. Basore "Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely love's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved, it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own triumph."
-- Henri Amiel, journal, 28 December, 1880, tr. Mrs. Humphrey Ward, 1887 "A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."
-- Robert Frost, in Norman Lockridge, comp., World's Wit and Wisdom, p. 299, 1936 "I have not found juries specially inspired for the discovery of truth.... I have not found them freer from prejudice than an ordinary judge would be."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., "Law in Science -- Science in Law", Collected Legal Papers, 1921 "Justice is indiscriminately due to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank."
-- John Jay, (U.S. Founding Father & Supreme Court chief justice), Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794 "Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct -- Never to show the least symptom of resentment which you cannot to a certain degree gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike."
-- Lord Chesterfield, letter to his son, 26 March, 1754 "The greatest favors may be done so awkwardly and bunglingly as to offend; and disagreeable things may be done so agreeably as almost to oblige."
-- Lord Chesterfield, letter to his son, 7 April, 1751 "Fools and low people... take civility and a little attention as a favor; remember and acknowledge it: this, in my mind, is buying them cheap; and therefore they are worth buying."
-- Lord Chesterfield, letter to his son, 14 February, 1752 "Moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Morality is herd instinct in the individual."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty."
-- Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. president, annual message to Congress, 8 January, 1964 "Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?"
-- Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness "All you learn and all you can read will be of little use if you do not think and reason upon it yourself. One reads to know other people's thoughts; but if we take them upon trust, without examining and comparing them with our own, it is really living upon other people's scraps or retailing other people's goods. To know the thoughts of others is of use because it suggests thoughts to oneself and helps one to form a judgment, but to repeat other people's thoughts without considering whether they are right or wrong is the talent only of a parrot or at most a player."
-- Lord Chesterfield, letter to his son, 1740?, undated "That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages."
-- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments "Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "Fame is a bee / It has a song -- / It has a sting -- / Ah, too, it has a wing."
-- Emily Dickinson, "Fame is a bee" (complete poem), undated "I exist as I am, that is enough, / If no other in the world be aware I sit content, / And if each and all be aware I sit content."
-- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself", Leaves of Grass "Those who will lie for you will lie against you."
-- Proverb (Bosnian) "When the multitude hate a man, it is necessary to examine into the case. When the multitude like a man, it is necessary to examine into the case."
-- Confucius, Confucian Analects, 15:27, tr. James Legge "Whenever he wanted some job done promptly by his troops, he first got down to it personally in full view of everyone."
-- Plutarch, on Agesilaus (Spartan king), in "Sayings of the Spartans: Agesilaus", Plutarch on Sparta "The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion -- except for the sect that can win political power."
-- Robert H. Jackson, Zorach v. Clauson (1952) "Wherever books are burned, sooner or later men also are burned."
-- Heinrich Heine, Almansor "What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect. In a Party member, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated."
-- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four "It is only a sentimental half-truth that the best things in life are free; while they may be, it is equally true that we need the money to buy the time to enjoy them."
-- Sydney J. Harris, Pieces of Eight "Tomorrow, every Fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack "Promptitude in speaking, which depends on activity of thought, can be retained only in exercise. Such exercise we may best use by speaking daily in the hearing of several persons, especially of those for whose judgment and opinion we have most regard; for it rarely happens that a person is sufficiently severe with himself. Let us, however, rather speak alone than not speak at all. There is also another kind of exercise, that of meditating upon whole subjects and going through them in silent thought (...to speak, as it were, within ourselves), an exercise which may be pursued at all times and in all places, when we are not actually engaged in any other occupation."
-- Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria "Puritanism -- The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
-- H.L. Mencken "The real 'haves' are those who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them."
-- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind "The Master is his own path."
-- Tuan-Mu Tz'u, in Confucius, The Sayings of Confucious "Thou canst not travel on the Path before thou has become that Path itself."
-- The Book of the Golden Precepts (ancient Buddhist writing) "Our discontent begins by finding false villains whom we can accuse of deceiving us. Next we find false heroes whom we expect to liberate us. The hardest, most discomfiting discovery is that each of us must emancipate himself."
-- Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America "Just read the Bible; it says over and over that you should not listen to people who are working for the other side. You should avoid them. You should close your mind to them. And if they say something that sounds convincing, that only proves what great deceivers they are, which is yet more reason to avoid them."
-- Michael Wong "Shitty leaders need to refocus their peoples' anger on other targets, and religion allows them to do this."
-- Michael Wong "If there's no 'moral equivalence' between Islam and Christianity, where's the widespread condemnation of radical Christianity? Where's the practical difference between seeking Rapture through violence and seeking 72 virgins through violence? Hell, it's damn easy to show trying to acheive Rapture is worse: A suicide bomber kills a couple dozen. The Rapture ends the world in fire and pain."
-- Martin Kemmish "FOX News Channel: Hot Porno for Republicans"
-- A slogan contained in a random signature image rotation by Michael Wong "The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist..."
-- Sam Harris, "The Atheist Manifesto" "Unicase typefaces should be mandatory for every idiot who thinks typing in aLtErNaTiNg CaPs is cool."
-- Brad Johnson "Assassins!"
-- Arturo Toscanini, scolding his entire orchestra during a rehearsal, recalled on his death, 16 January, 1957 Talho: "What is this sound?"
Renton: "It's a miner. He still believes there's a mine in here somewhere. He thinks his dream is buried in there."
Talho: "It's a really sad sound, don't you think?"
-- Episode 17: "Sky Rock Gate", Eureka 7 "If you throw enough dirt, some will stick."
-- Proverb (Latin) "There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place."
-- Washington Irving, "To The Reader", Tales of a Traveler (1824) "His character was of an average kind, rather free from vices than distinguished by virtues."
-- Tacitus, The History "If you try to calm your mind, you will be unable to sit; and if you try not to be disturbed, your effort will not be the right effort. The only effort that will help you is to count your breathing, or to concentrate on your inhaling and exhaling. We say concentration, but to concentrate your mind on something is not the true purpose of Zen. The true purpose is to see things as they are... and to let everything go as it goes. This is to put everyrthing under control in its widest sense. Zen practice is to open up our small mind. So concentrating is just an aid to help you realize 'big mind,' or the mind that is everything. If you want to discover the true meaning of Zen in your everyday life, you have to understand the meaning of keeping your mind on your breathing and your body in the right posture in zazen [meditation in a sitting position]."
-- Shunryu Suzuki, "Right Practice", Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, ed. Trudy Dixon, 1970 "Instead of clearing his own heart, the zealot tries to clear the world."
-- Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces "Zeal is fit only for Wise Men, but is found mostly in Fools."
-- Thomas Fuller, comp., Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs "A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if [he has] lost no time."
-- Francis Bacon, "Of Youth and Age", Essays "Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough."
-- Lord Chesterfield, letter to his son, 15 January, 1753 "Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exist for his sake."
-- Goethe, on "The Arrogance of Youth", 6 December, 1829, in Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe "To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable."
-- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray "Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time... But He loves you!"
-- George Carlin, You Are All Diseased "Pray for anything. But! What about the Divine Plan? Remember that? The Divine Plan. Long time ago, God created a Divine Plan. Gave it a lot of thought, decided it was a good plan, put it into practice. And for billions and billions of years the Divine Plan has been doing just fine. Now you come along and pray for something. Well suppose the thing you want isn't in God's Divine Plan. What do you want Him to do, change His plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a Divine Plan! What's the use of being God if every run-down shmuck with a two-dollar prayer book can come along and fuck up your plan? And here's something else, another problem you might have: suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? 'Well it's God's will. Thy will be done.' Fine. But if it's God's will and He's going to do what he wants to anyway, why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me. Couldn't you just skip the praying part and go right to His will?"
-- George Carlin, You Are All Diseased "The wisest men follow their own direction / And listen to no prophet guiding them. / None but the fools believe in oracles, / Forsaking their own judgment."
-- Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris "The wise Man, even when he holds his Tongue, says more than the Fool when he speaks."
-- Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs "They named it ovation, from the Latin ovis [a sheep]."
-- Plutarch, "Marcellus", Parallel Lives, Dryden edition "Before asserting that the deceptive appearance of a grasshopper or butterfly is unnecessarily detailed, we must first ascertain what are the powers of perception and discrimination of the insects' natural enemies. Not to do so is like asserting that the armour of a battlecruiser is too heavy, or the range of her guns too great, without inquiring into the nature and effectiveness of the enemy's armament. The fact is that in the primeval struggle of the jungle, as in the refinements of civilized warfare, we see in progress a great evolutionary armament race -- whose results, for defence, are manifested in such devices as speed, alertness, armour, spinescence, burrowing habits, nocturnal habits, poisonous secretions, nauseous taste, and [camouflage and other kinds of protective coloration]; and for offence, in such counter-attributes as speed, surprise, ambush, allurement, visual acuity, claws, teeth, stings, poison fangs, and [lures]. Just as greater speed in the pursued has developed in relation to increased speed in the pursuer; or defensive armour in relation to aggressive weapons; so the perfection of concealing devices has evolved in response to increased powers of perception."
-- H.B. Cott, Adaptive Coloration in Animals "An outstanding feature of successful adaptation is that it leaves the way open for future growth."
-- George E. Vaillant, Adaptation to Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), p. 27 "I hear the loved survivors tell / How naught from death could save, / Till every sound appears a knell, / And every spot a grave."
-- Abraham Lincoln to Andrew Johnston, April 18, 1846, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, I, p. 379. "Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow; but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them."
-- Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, quoted in George E. Vaillant, The Wisdom of the Ego (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 358. "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen / And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
-- Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 3rd edn., ed. Alexander W. Allison, et al. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983), pp. 249-50. "The mossy marbles rest / On lips that he has prest / In their bloom, / And the names he loved to hear / Have been carved for many a year / On the tomb."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Last Leaf", in The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1892), p. 4. "With malice toward none; with charity for all"
-- Abraham Lincoln, "Second Inaugural Address", March 4, 1865, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, VIII, p. 333. "A great many people would prefer a beautiful lie over a remorseful truth."
-- Kevin Mark Peñafiel Malone "To fail to consult the past consigns us to what might be called the tyranny of the present -- the mistaken idea that the crises of our own time are unprecedented and that we have to solve them without experience to guide us. Subject to such a tyranny, we are more likely to take a narrow or simplistic view, or to let our passions get the better of our reason. If we know, however, how those who came before us found the ways and means to surmount the difficulties of their age, we stand a far better chance of acting in the moment with perspective and measured judgment."
-- Jon Meacham, American Gospel (page 232) "...experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
-- James Madison, "Memorial and Remonstrance" "What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not. Such a government will be best supported by protecting every citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of others."
-- James Madison, "Memorial and Remonstrance" "It's coming from 'I need a good-sounding cover-up for my homophobia'. If marriage were really that sacred, people would have pitched a fit when Las Vegas started doing late-night impromptu weddings. Never mind pre-nuptial agreements and turnkey divorce."
-- Michael Wong, responding to the following question: "Where the fuck is this 'sacred union' nonsense coming from?" "Psychologically speaking, there is a certain 'Lord of the Flies' aspect to overseas military deployment. You're isolated from the social structure you grew up with, and the only control on your behaviour is your fellow soldiers ... who have a strong culture of looking out for one another. Groupthink would become an extremely powerful influence in a situation like that, and conversely, the isolation of one who does not go along with the group would be much more extreme than it would be back on the homeland."
-- Michael Wong "And regarding profanity, I hate to break it to you, but there's this thing called the 'style over substance' fallacy that you will find in any logic textbook, and seizing upon profanity as proof of illogic is a fine example of that fallacy. If I say 'wrong, asshole', you may not like it, and you would certainly have the right to respond with similar language, but it is not any less valid a reply than 'you are completely incorrect, my good sir.'"
-- Michael Wong "We will get rational political campaigns focused on the issues only when voters become rational and well informed. How can any amount of money make a bad idea good? Why should it make the slightest difference how much money a candidate has to spend, if we base our decisions on the quality of his ideas? Money will stop playing a role in elections when it stops playing a role with voters. Negative campaigns will end when people stop being influenced by them. Expecting campaign finance reform when we have a superficial, uninformed electorate is like expecting sponsors of Saturday morning cartoons to stop advertising sugary cereal to kids. If you expect campaign managers to give up methods that work because the public is too lazy and lacking in integrity to bother becoming informed, you expect what never was and never will be. The tragedy is not that so many people fail to vote on election day but that so many uninformed and superficially informed people do."
-- Steven Dutch, "Lessons Learned: Election 2000" "...there are many people who claim to be so disillusioned that they don’t participate at all. What these folks are saying is that those of us who do participate can work to reform the system, and when we have put in enough time, money and effort to change things to their satisfaction, they will condescend to come out and grace us with their participation. Can you tell I’m not impressed? These people aren’t principled -- they’re parasites and freeloaders. If they don’t like the system and aren’t doing anything to change it, they deserve what they get. Stay home, people! You just help make my vote more valuable."
-- Steven Dutch, "Lessons Learned: Election 2000" "This division [forest versus desert societies] makes ecological sense. Deserts teach large, singular lessons, like how tough, spare, and withholding the environment is; the world is reduced to simple, desiccated, furnace-blasted basics. Then picture rain forest people amid an abundance of edible plants and medicinal herbs, able to identify more species of ants on a single tree than one would find in all the British Isles. Letting a thousand deities bloom in this sort of setting must seem natural. Moreover, those rain forest dwellers that are monotheistic are much less likely to believe that their god sticks his or her nose into other people’s business by controlling the weather, prompting illness, or the like. In contrast, the desert seems to breed fatalism, a belief in an interventionist god with its own capricious plans."
-- Robert Sapolsky, "Are the Desert People Winning?", Discover (magazine), August 2005, Vol.26, #8, p. 38-41 "With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-- Steven Weinberg, in an address at the Conference on Cosmic Design, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C. (April 1999) "Can you imagine if Diebold ATMs occasionally 'malfunctioned' and put somebody's paycheque deposit into someone else's bank account? They'd be scrambling to fix it, heads would roll, lawsuits would fly. But when it's just votes ... meh."
-- Michael Wong Captain America: "Listen to me--all of you out there! You were told by this man--your hero [the 1950s-era 'replacement' Captain America]--that America is the greatest country in the world! He told you that Americans were the greatest people--that America could be refined like silver, could have the impurities hammered out of it, and shine more brightly! He went on about how precious America was--how you needed to make sure it remained great! And he told you anything was justified to preserve that great treasure, that pearl of great price that is America! Well, I say America is nothing! Without its ideals--its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash! A nation is nothing! A flag is a piece of cloth! I fought Adolf Hitler not because America was great, but because it was fragile! I knew that liberty could as easily be snuffed out here as in Nazi Germany! As a people, we were no different from them! When I returned, I saw that you nearly did turn America into nothing! And the only reason you're not less than nothing--is that it's still possible for you to bring freedom back to America!"
[There is a long silence, then...]
Civilian: "Th-that is him! That's the real Captain America!"
-- "What if Captain America Were Not Revived Until Today?", What If? #44, written by Peter B. Gillis and pencilled by Sal Buscema with inks by Dave Simons. "The overwhelming impression when you deal with the really devout believer is that he honestly feels sorry for all of these people who don't have what he thinks he has. After all, he's got a First Class Ticket On Afterlife Airlines, while you threw away your chance at first class seating by pissing off the ticket agent with all of your cavorting around and pot smoking and premarital sex. So you may be laughing now, but you'll be sorry when you show up at the Boarding Call and you're told that they lost your reservation. So you're clearly an idiot for not apologizing to the ticket agent and begging for your seat assignment, and he feels sorry for you because he knows you'll be booted off the plane.

Of course, it doesn't occur to them that this entire intellectual framework has a foundation of thin air. There might be no Afterlife Airlines, or they could have gone to the wrong ticket desk, or maybe it turns out that the whole airport is a sham and they should be waiting on the riverbanks of the River Styx with coins on their eyes for the boatman."
-- Michael Wong "...why the hell does believing in free speech oblige me to not attack and criticize others’ ideas? This is the kind of complete idiocy I’ve come to expect from a lot of people in this country. They think that because they have the right to do something, their fellow citizens have to put up with it.
Allow me to inform everyone of a very basic principle of the US government. Having the right to do something protects you against the government penalizing you for doing that thing. That’s it. Nothing else. The right to free speech does not mean that everyone else has to shut up when you’re talking. Know why? Because they have that same right. The right to religious expression does not allow for religious beliefs to be legislated into law. Know why? Because other people of other faiths have the same rights."
-- Damien Sorresso, "Some people are stupid" "Am I the only one who’s sick of seeing people on TV (and in real-life) telling you that they know more about relationships than you because they’ve been divorced three times?

Maybe I’ve only had one marriage, but I didn’t fuck it up. So don’t talk down to me because I had one success, compared to your three failures.

Can you imagine a guy who flunked an exam in school three times, telling people that they should look to his expertise on how to pass the exam? People would laugh their asses off at him. But for some reason, when the exam is marriage, this kind of bizarre logic convinces people!

People are so incredibly irrational."
-- Michael Wong, "Experts at Failure" "The Romans are an interesting object lesson in the failure of great empires not just because they fell, but also because they demonstrated just how much you have to fuck up in order to fail once you've achieved that kind of critical mass. When you look at how incompetent or borderline insane some of the emperors and administrators were, it seems almost amazing that the Roman Empire didn't fall earlier. And I think we're seeing some of the same phenomenon with the US. Its inherent strength, accumulated mostly during the middle of the 20th century, is so great that it can withstand considerable incompetence at the leadership level without losing its power or suffering the kind of collapse that would befall lesser nations given a similar degree of corruption and incompetence. But that is no reason to be complacent."
-- Michael Wong "You obviously haven't dealt with enough fundies. They hate people like me [atheists and other infidels]. Sure, they say shit like 'hate the sin, not the sinner' but that's just self-deluding bullshit. In reality, they are full of hate for people who don't get with their program. They think we're dangerous and should be silenced. Even Jesus himself in their New Testament tells them that people like me, who not only say these things but try to teach them to others (including children), deserve the worst kind of suffering."
-- Michael Wong "You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time."
-- Abraham Lincoln, attributed by Alexander K. McClure, in Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories, p. 184 (1904)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations: Many quotation books have also attributed this to Lincoln, and the sources given have varied. According to Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, p. 81 (1953), "Tradition has come to attribute to the Clinton [Illinois] speeches [September 2, 1858] one of Lincoln’s most famous utterances--'You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.'" But he goes on to say that the epigram and any references to it have not been located in surviving Lincoln documents.

This remark has also been attributed to P. T. Barnum "The problem is that atheism is not an ideology. It can't be compared to religion. Communism, on the other hand, is quite obviously an ideology. So you can't regard the communists as an indicator of how atheists would behave, any more than you would use the communists as an indicator of how mathematicians would behave just because communists accepted math too. And for the same reason: math may be an idea but it's not an ideology. It doesn't tell people how to live."
-- Michael Wong "Speaking of Tony Snow, I still can't believe that there are people out there who honestly believe FOXNews is anything but a mouthpiece for the adminstration. When the Bush Administration needed a new spokesperson, they went straight to FOXNews!"
-- Michael Wong "The best defense is a good offense."
-- Unknown "In a similar topic, one of our resident Christian Zealots likened God to a parent who could not be blamed if his child disobeyed him. I wish I had said this then, but the real truth of that analogy is that God is a parent who leaves a gun sitting in a drawer, and waits for his ignorant child to take it and shoot somebody. He sits there and waits, never seeing fit to interfere."
-- Brad Johnson "As for the Christofascists, all of that 'love the sinner, hate the sin' rhetoric sounds pretty good until it's thrown back in your face, doesn't it? Love the Christian, hate Christianity."
-- Michael Wong "Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
-- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species "...in real-life, the most aggressive asshole tends to win. You can't really cut someone off in mid-sentence on the Internet. You can unilaterally end a conversation in either real-life or the Internet, but you can't just talk over someone or continually interrupt him so no one else can hear what he's saying. This happens all the time in real life.

I've found that fundies are by far the most likely group to cut people off in mid-sentence. In fact, I've never once been able to get through my 'this is the actual definition of evolution' explanation without being cut off by a fundie. But what's quite disturbing is that a lot of 'moderates' do the same thing. I think that on some level, they're afraid that I'll make too much sense, as opposed to the fundie who doesn't even care if I make sense because he rejects logic itself. I remember one guy saying 'You're just trying to confuse me'. Yeah, we can't let anyone cloud that false sense of certainty, can we?

And then there's all those patented 'moderate' end-of-conversation lines:

'That's neither here nor there.'
'That's six of one, half-dozen of the other.'
'You have your opinion, I have mine.'
'I think everyone's entitled to his own opinion.'
'Well, the people on the other side make some pretty convincing arguments too.'
'You're just as close-minded to them as they are to you.'

You can almost see the mush in their heads."
-- Michael Wong "One thing I've noticed about fundies and right-wingers (not coincidentally, since they are often the same people) is that they have an absolutely absurd, hopelessly caricatured view of the other side's position. You can tell they haven't spent so much as 60 seconds in their entire lives trying to understand the opposing viewpoint.

It's annoying. I've slogged through the entire Bible: something most Christians have never bothered doing. I own a copy of a Jehovah's Witness book attacking evolution and I read that too. Yet I routinely run into fundies who haven't even mustered the effort to so much as read a single treatise on atheism that didn't come from their own side of the aisle, and they always claim that they've actually 'studied' the issue.

Just try listening to a fundie sometime; he honestly thinks atheists are just people who are rebelling against God so they can be hedonists. It honestly doesn't occur to him that maybe the atheist has simply concluded that the whole idea of God is nonsensical. And then try listening to a right-winger; these people honestly believe that everyone on the left wants to put up child molesters in luxury condos and give Osama Bin Laden a great big hug while pissing on the graves on 9/11 victims and having abortions for fun."
-- Michael Wong "The thing about conservative political dogmas such as 'abstinence-only sex education reduces teen pregnancy' is that you can disprove it with as many statistics and studies as you want, but they'll keep repeating it anyway. It's not a scientific theory in their minds, hence it is not subject to disproof. As far as they're concerned, it's 'self-evident' and hence it is immune to disproof."
-- Michael Wong Hudson: "Hey Vasquez, you ever been mistaken for a man?"
Vasquez: "No. Have you?"
-- Aliens "An intelligent guard! Didn't see that one coming."
-- Preed, Titan A.E. "The truth of the matter is this: if you really believed in the moral truths of the causes you champion, you would not need the Church. If these ideals are truly reasonable, ethical human values, then even we heretics would uphold them, and the voice of the Church would not need to be heard in order for them to become law.

Yes, it can be truly said that the only weight the Church can add is the weight of 'God said so.' No, I tell you that the Church is not the top of the moral ladder, because the Church has never had the interests of mankind at heart. They do not even have the interests of God at heart. They have the interests of a few men clinging to outdated ideals and power, men who would rather 'stick to their guns' than say 'Hey, it's okay if you use birth control.'

I contend that if you believe the Church needs any say in championing it's morals, then you do not truly believe in those causes--you only follow them because 'God said so.' For if you had other reasons to promote them, you would not need the Church--and that is why your [U.S.] Constitution specifies separation; so that the reasons for a law are genuine, and not influenced by the only contribution the Church can make--that some phantom entity among the clouds wants it to be so.

Religions are not moral authorities. They are not the wise old institutions trying to instill sense into the masses. They are the kings of conquest and murder, the princes of hate and intolerance. They are the champions of ignorance, and the royal family of war."
-- Brad Johnson "...But it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you."
-- Rachel Dawes, Batman Begins "The taboo against swearing is just social traditionalism. There is no objective reason why one particular kind of slang-word is worse than another, and in fact, if you look at swear words, they all have to do with body-functions, which is another indicator that the taboo against these words is a product of Victorian-era thinking.

Nevertheless, a lot of people subscribe to this nonsense, just as a lot of people respond strongly to 'arguments' such as 'how dare you attack peoples' beliefs'. It offends their sensibilities even though there's absolutely no good reason for it. And yes, there are unfortunately plenty of people out there who would prefer a polite liar over an uncouth but honest person. That's a sad reality of our society."
-- Michael Wong Fry: "Bender! What was it like, lying in that hole for a thousand years?"
Bender: "I was enjoying it until you guys showed up."
-- Season 4, Episode 1: "Roswell that Ends Well", Futurama "God as a theory is entirely meaningless. You cannot use God to make scientific predictions. However, you can make predictions using quantum theory, and you can observe the universe and see how closely the universe's behavior matches predictions in quantum theory. And you can use the maths derived by quantum mechanics to solve real-world problems. You can't do that with God.

That is the principle difference between quantum mechanics and God. Quantum mechanics can be put to work in a useful fashion. God, on the other hand, is useless."
-- Terwynn "If you wish to use absolute proof, certainty, or guarantees of truth as your litmus test for validity, then you have just subscribed to solipsism: the belief that nothing can be reliably known besides the existence of your own thought. Why? Because nothing can be absolutely proven beyond 'I think therefore I am'. Nothing is absolutely certain beyond 'I think therefore I am'. Nothing can be guaranteed true beyond 'I think therefore I am'. For all you know, nothing exists beyond your own mind, and the entire universe is but a figment of your imagination.

'But that's absurd,' you might object, and you would be right. Solipsism strikes virtually any reasonable observer as patently absurd. For most people, solipsism smacks of philosophy gone awry, or perhaps a perverse desire to denigrate every other field of study by declaring all of them to be uncertain supposition in one fell swoop. The salty description of solipsism is 'useless smart-assed philosophical bullshit', and to be quite frank, that's a fairly reasonable description. But since solipsism is the inevitable outcome of the demand for absolute proof, certainty, or guarantees, one cannot demand such things without inadvertently sliding into solipsism! This is not a slippery slope; solipsism is the direct result of the decision to accept only that which is absolutely certain, proven, or guaranteed true.

So if we must abandon absolute certainty, proof, and guarantees of truth, what do we have left? The answer is simple practicality: the driving force behind engineering and science. Perhaps sensory observation is not real. However, it is the only information which we have at our disposal, so we might as well use it. Is it real? Is it all a grand illusion? Who cares? The point is that it seems to be quite consistent, ie- the universe described by our sensory observations seems to follow consistent rules. We want to know what those rules are, so we need to employ a systematic, logical method, ie- the scientific method. And for any given phenomenon, we must generate a theory to explain the rules which govern it."
-- Michael Wong, "Science, the Grand Illusion, and Other Neat Stuff" Gordon: "I never said thank you."
Batman: "And you'll never have to."
-- Batman Begins "The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it."
-- Jorge Luis Borges, A Universal History of Iniquity "To be forgotten is worse than death."
-- Freya Crescent, Final Fantasy IX "If the only reason you can give for something is that it's traditional, you have no reason at all."
-- Michael Wong "...Got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God... And I absolutely hate the fucker."
-- Vin Diesel as Riddick, in Pitch Black "Aslan is what Jesus would have been if the Bible had been written by an American. After his 'sacrifice', he comes back with a huge army and bites his enemy's fucking head off. Much cooler."
-- Michael Wong "...What's with this idiotic 'Well, it was a good idea in theory, but it just didn't work out' crap? This is really prevalent among college students talking about communism. Every damned person thinks that communism is a good idea 'in theory.' No, it's not a good idea in theory. It's not a good idea at all. There's no such thing as a 'good theory' that just doesn't work out in reality.

Why? Because theories are supposed to model reality! How the hell can you have a good theory that fails to conform to reality? Communism made assumptions that weren't true, and of course, it didn't work! Some say, 'But if those assumptions were true, it would have worked.' So what?! The theory made assumptions which were false, and that makes it a bad theory!

Jesus Christ, come on. If I proposed a way to bring about world peace by sprinkling magic fairy dust on everybody, is my idea good 'in theory'? No? But my theory assumes that magical fairy dust exists. Just because reality doesn't conform to that assumption doesn't mean it's a bad theory!" [At this point of his forum post, he uses the eye-rolling emoticon]
-- Damien Sorresso, "'It's good in theory ...'" "People define open-mindedness as an uncritical approach toward ideas, rather than an acceptance of cultural diversity so long as it doesn't harm others. We have gone from the notion that 'it's OK to think something is wrong just because it's different' to 'it is never OK to think something is wrong even if you can produce overwhelming evidence that it is'."
-- Michael Wong "'Anyone who is a Christian who commits unspeakable atrocities in the name of Christianity isn't a 'true Christian,' because being a Christian means that you must be a moral person with respect to the humanist moral code, even though the Bible makes no such requirement.' I heard that spiel in retreats and Theology classes, and it doesn't float. It's the reasoning used by Christians who feel guilty about their religion's ugly past and similarly ugly beliefs in order to make themselves feel better. They concoct their own brand of the religion and call it 'True Christianity,' while saying that anyone who doesn't follow their brand of Christianity is not a Christian, thus absolving Christianity, as a whole, from any blame for the atrocious actions it has brought forth."
-- Damien Sorresso "Never bring a knife to a gunfight."
-- Proverb (Mexican) "The uninformed must improve their deficit or die."
-- Cheshire Cat, American McGee's Alice (video game) "Your knife is necessary, but not sufficient. Always collect what's useful. Reject only your ignorance, and you might survive."
-- Cheshire Cat, American McGee's Alice (video game) "How fine you look when dressed in rage. Your enemies are fortunate that your condition is not permanent. And you're lucky too: Red eyes suit so few."
-- Cheshire Cat (speaking to Alice after she obtains a second Rage Box power-up), American McGee's Alice (video game) "Those who say there's nothing like a nice cup of tea for calming the nerves never had real tea. It's like a syringe of adrenaline straight to the heart!"
-- Cheshire Cat, American McGee's Alice (video game) "Nature has ordained that certain seeds require assistance to fulfill their destiny."
-- Cheshire Cat, American McGee's Alice (video game) "A dagger can be concealed in a smile."
-- Proverb (Chinese) "Dancing is silent poetry."
-- Simonides (556-468bc) "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."
-- Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger "Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable."
-- Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960) "Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of Government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to Government, and would exist if the formality of Government was abolished.... In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to Government."
-- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1792) "1) Most atheists identify themselves as 'agnostics' in order to avoid the very real social consequences of identifying yourself as a member of the last totally acceptable target of overt discrimination in America. This widespread behaviour helps to perpetuate this status, because people literally don't realize how many atheists exist. They can comfortably convince themselves that atheists are exceedingly rare and perhaps freakish, because they've never known one; they've only known agnostics. So there is a certain self-interest in accusing agnostics of being cowardly atheists; in many cases they are, and it arguably hurts atheists as a social group.

2) People who truly believe in the tenets of agnosticism as laid out by Huxley are anti-scientific idiots. If they understood science at all, they would understand that you cannot just arbitrarily add unmeasurable terms into scientific theories, and God is as unmeasurable as it gets. How could the scientific method even deal with the idea of God? How does God get past the part about confirming theoretical predictions through observation and/or experiment?

PS. Anybody who quotes Kuhn as disproof of the reliability of science is an idiot. This is a person whose argument, if taken to its logical conclusion, would lead inexorably to the outcome that the Sun is just as likely to rise in the West tomorrow as the East. It is an argument based upon a false dilemma fallacy in which all knowledge is divided into two categories: absolutely true or not absolutely true, with no finer graduations."
-- Michael Wong "We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities... We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."
-- Edward Murrow "Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
-- Bertrand Russell, "Is there a God?" (1952), repr. in Russel (1997b) "The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson "Can omniscient God, who / Knows the future, find / The omnipotence to / Change His future mind?
-- Karen Owens "We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them 'religious'; otherwise, they are likely to be called 'mad', 'psychotic', or 'delusional'... Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are."
-- Sam Harris, The End of Faith "People say we need religion when what they really mean is we need police."
-- H.L. Mencken "The Bible is a blueprint of in-group morality, complete with instructions for genocide, enslavement of out-groups, and world domination. But the Bible is not evil by virtue of its objectives or even its glorification of murder, cruelty, and rape. Many ancient works do that -- the Iliad, the Icelandic, Sagas, the tales of the ancient Syrians and the inscriptions of the ancient Mayans, for example. But no one is selling the Iliad as a foundation for morality. Therein lies the problem. The Bible is sold, and bought, as a guide to how people should live their lives. And it is, by far, the world's all-time best seller."
-- John Hartung, "Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality", Skeptic, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1995) "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
-- Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1670) "The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing outselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?"
-- Sam Harris, The End of Faith "There is in every village a torch -- the teacher: and an extinguisher -- the clergyman."
-- Victor Hugo "Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman."
-- H.L. Mencken "I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."
-- Achilles, Troy (2004) "Some of the more clever creationists actually recognize that logic is not with them so they know they can't actually win an honest argument. Instead, they only try to make sure it never ends, because as long as it continues, they feel like they're winning. It's kind of like an insurgency; as long as the fighting continues, the insurgent is achieving his goals."
-- Michael Wong "Sick of tea?! That's like being sick of breathing!"
-- Iroh, "City of Walls and Secrets", Avatar: The Last Airbender "Although extraordinary valour was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespians, yet the bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dienekes. It is said that on the eve of the battle [of Thermopylae], he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, when they loosed their volleys, the mass of arrows blocked out the sun. Dienekes, however, quite undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, 'Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade.'"
-- Herodotus, The Histories "What's the difference between a Spartan King and a middle-ranker?"
"The king sleeps in that shit-hole over there, we sleep in the shit-hole over here."
-- Old Spartan joke "The New Deal, the Fair Deal, and LBJ's Great Society created a nice long period in which the playing field was evened out and as a result the people of this country ended up forgetting the time when things really were skewed in favour of the rich and the working classes could barely hang on to what little they had. Easy credit keeps up the illusion of prosperity as long as you ignore the crushing personal debt too many people in America end up building up. And now you've got a media machine combined with a treadmill-like existence in this country in which people are continually dazzled to keep up with the Joneses and the result is a population who really have no clue that a new plutocracy has arisen under their own noses, who've lost touch with the concept of politics as a tool for change, who've been suckered into disdaining politics all together or otherwise (particularly the religious) are pointed at strawman enemies to hate and fear and bullshit non-issues to get worked up about. And the result is that the populist strain in American political thought has been effectively buried and forgotten."
-- Patrick Degan, Re: "The myth of American populism" "I've actually run into a Jew who said that it should be illegal to say that the Holocaust never happened, because that's how hatred is spread. However, he believed that it would be wrong to punish people for saying that homosexuals are abominations who deserve death. I tried to explain the contradiction to him, without success.

Apparently, according to people like this, it is totally wrong to preach hatred against Jews. but when you preach hatred against homosexuals it's OK because you are just explaining the laws of God."
-- Michael Wong, Re: "British Christians, Jews and Muslims unite in hatred of gays" "The problem is that logic fallacies are hard to learn, in the sense that they require a certain amount of maturity and intelligence. Mindless repetition and indoctrination in mythology, however, can be done starting from infancy. There is no comprehension required; you simply keep repeating the same lines over and over and over until they become instinct.

That's always been the big weapon used by religion against science and rationality. Science and rationality are, quite simply, not natural. They take hard work to grasp. There is discipline required. Religion, on the other hand, is dirt-easy to learn. It comes in the form of stories which require no real conceptual comprehension at all; they're just stories, designed to be comprehensible by cattle-sacrificing savages.

In short, it goes like this:

SCIENCE: I have some very complicated concepts for you. You will need to understand logic and have a firm grasp of mathematics in order to understand them, and you will need to study them for years, starting from the simplest concepts so that you can understand the more complicated ones. There will be tough examinations and a lot of lab work. If you don't pay attention and work hard, you'll fail.

RELIGION: I have a story to tell you. It's so simple that a child can understand it. In fact, it's better if you're a child. Let me talk to your children."
-- Michael Wong, RE: "Crazy-ass fallacy" "The funniest thing about the 'Institute for Creation Research' is that they know an ark of the described dimensions couldn't possibly hold two of every species. So they theorize that the ark only contained a relatively small number of species... who naturally speciated into the world's present biodiversity after being released from the Ark.

Naturally, many people have pointed out to them that this theory requires the mechanism of evolutionary speciation, to which they respond 'no it doesn't, that's not real evolution'. So to recap, when an animal population changes, that's not real evolution. Even if an animal population splits into two species, that's also not real evolution. I'm not sure what they think real evolution is, but I suspect it's like what they do in Pokemon."
-- Michael Wong, Re: "Noah's Ark and the New World" "To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
-- Saying (Old) "The command of the old despotisms was 'Thou shalt not'. The command of the totalitarians was 'Thou shalt'. Our command is 'Thou art'."
-- George Orwell, Ninteen Eighty-Four "...for the love of God, will you give the ellipses a rest? The English language has a selection of punctuation marks for a reason; please use them."
-- Brad Johnson "Live-and-let-live, worship-and-let-worship was the essence of religion in this land of vast distances and a hundred religions, of which the most important in terms of politics was the vaguely Christian rationalism that governed the tolerant minds of men like Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, and Washington. (The last and least skeptical of these rationalists loaded his First Inaugural Address with appeals to the 'Great Author,' 'Almighty Being,' 'invisible hand,' and 'benign parent of the human race,' but apparently could not bring himself to speak the word 'God.')"
-- Clinton Rossiter, American historian, "The United States in 1787," 1787: The Grand Convention, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987 (first ed., 1966), p. 36. "One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian."
-- Mortimer Adler, 1902- , American philosopher and educator, ed. "Chapter 22: Religion and Religious Groups in America," The Annals of America: Great Issues in American Life, Vol. II, Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, p. 420. "Many of the states [in the period between the Revolution and the adoption of the U. S. Constitution], in order to obviate any suggestion of a religious establishment, prohibited all clergymen from sitting in the legislation."
-- Gordon S, Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1972 [orig. publ. 1969], pp. 158-159 [footnote]. Wood cites the state constitutions of Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, New York, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. "Preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell should not forget that, in the colony of Virginia, Baptist ministers were beaten and imprisoned and run out of town for preaching their dissenting faith, while Anglican ministers were paid with tax funds from the state treasury."
-- John Buchanan, Southern Baptist minister and former eight-term Republican Congressman from Alabama, who heads People for the American Way, as quoted by Samuel Rabinove, "Religious Liberty and Church-State Separation: Why Should We Care?," speech on April 10, 1986, Vital Speeches of the Day, June 15, 1986, p. 527. "Manuscripts are to be weighed, not counted."
-- An old text-critical adage. "Fundies think that only Christians (and often only their particular brand of Christians) will go to Heaven. So-called 'moderates' tend to believe that any basically good person will go to Heaven. A lot of Christians also believe that anybody who believes in any religion will go to Heaven, so atheists are fucked.

You really get an idea of how much Christianity is a vendetta religion when you listen to Christians talking about Hell, though."
-- Michael Wong "Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. just kinda makes life more fun. It's like the exact opposite of terrorism."
-- John Mayer "On American Politics: I have a question for our friendly but eccentric Yankee friends: why do you revere your Founding Fathers so much? The way you talk about them, you'd think they were modern-day messiahs. You quote the bastards the same way you quote your Bible. Tricky ethical dilemma? Let's see what the Founding Fathers had to say! Trying to chart social policy? Let's see what the Founding Fathers had to say! I'm starting to wonder if you consult the Founding Fathers for dating advice. 'Dear Benjamin Franklin, I met this girl today, and she's really hot, but she's kind of dumb. What should I do?' Get a grip, people. They had some good ideas, and I'm not saying you need to tear down everything they created, but you need to stop quoting those guys like Holy Scripture. They're not gods, they're not infallible..."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On Beggars: Fuck 'em. We have a decent welfare system in my country [Canada], therefore they have no excuse to be harassing people for money. Oh, and by the way, I refuse to call them 'panhandlers'. They're beggars, so fuck 'em twice. And the ones who squeegee your car are not 'squeegee kids'; they're thugs. Thugs who extort money from motorists with the implicit threat of petty damage to your car if you won't pay for a 'service' you never even asked for. Fuck 'em all."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On 'The Sanctity of Marriage': If marriage really is a 'sacred institution', why is it not only possible but actually convenient to get a divorce? Hell, you can even get married with a pre-nuptial agreement that nullifies most of the conditions of the marriage! It's like signing a contract with an addendum that says 'Oh, and by the way, I didn't mean any of that. Gotcha!' So much for 'till death do us part', eh? More like 'till I get a promotion at work'. So don't sell me some song and dance about how you laid there, oblivious to all these assaults on this so-called 'sacred institution', until the gays started doing it and woke you up out of your beer-induced coma. If you really thought marriage was 'sacred', you would have been out there trying to outlaw pre-nups (and for the record, I didn't sign one; I'm really married). Oh but wait, there's Rick Santorum saying that you can't let gays marry because they're not 'ideal parents'. That's another angle, right? Really clever, right? OK smart-ass, then why don't you explain to me why the fuck you let alcoholics, smokers, and even actors get married? Hell, you can be a fucking convicted murderer and still get married. 'Ideal parents' my ass. And then there's the idiotic argument about how gay marriage leads to pedophilia, as if all the pedophiles out there are currently being held back by the fact that gays can't marry. 'Oh no, the gays can't get married, I guess I'll stop being a pedophile!' Never in my life have I seen people so utterly full of shit as the homophobes who claim they're 'defending' marriage by keeping the gays out of it. Every reason they make up is such an obvious smokescreen that my fire alarm goes off whenever I read their bullshit."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On Atheism: I'm an atheist, but despite what the fundies may believe, I don't sacrifice babies. I don't worship Satan, although Sympathy for the Devil is a great song. I support gay rights, but nobody is touching my ass unless he's my doctor. I volunteer with the Boy Scouts. I give to charity. I celebrate Christmas (the cool secular Christmas with the tree and Santa and the presents, not that lame-ass Catholic one where you sit on a hard wooden bench for two hours and listen to a priest lecturing you on your sins). I'm married with kids, and I'm totally monogamous. I enjoy watching pornography with my wife, not because I secretly want to cheat on her but because it's fun, and sex is how healthy adults play (why do you think they call them sex toys?). She even has her favourite blue movies, and they're nasty (I married well). I believe in humanism, not communism. Do I fit your expectations of an atheist? Here's a hint: atheism is not a religion; if it was, then we'd have some kind of shared values, and we don't. Some of us are communists, some of us are free-market libertarians, some of us are humanists, some of us are utilitarians, etc. You Christians have to get over your silly idea that everyone who doesn't believe in your God must think the same way. There's a whole world of weird and wacky beliefs out there once you leave the crib."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On the American South: You suck. Seriously, you do. You can't even admit that you were on the wrong side of the Civil War. You use out-of-context quotes to smear Lincoln endlessly, and you spout voluminous bullshit about how you seceded over all kinds of reasons other than slavery, even though any idiot can read the Southern Declarations of Secession and see that you did secede over slavery. The Texas Declaration repeatedly attacked the abolitionists and praised slavery as 'Divine Law', for fuck's sake. And Mississippi's Declaration said 'Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world.' How can you Southerners move forward if you insist on lying about your past? Hell, even the Germans admit to their past evils. Besides, your deep-fried diet is disgusting. I can't eat that shit without feeling like I'm going to throw up. And no, this has nothing to do with the fact that I was a Buffalo Bills fan during the Jim Kelly years and I hated the Dallas Cowboys. Goddamned Emmitt Smith ..."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On Appearance and Superficiality: If I say 'You have the most beautiful eyes', that is considered a wonderful, charming compliment. On the other hand, if I say 'You have the most beautiful legs', that's considered borderline crass. And if I say 'You have the most beautiful ass', that's completely out of line and I'm a filthy disgusting male chauvinist pig who views women as 'objects' and is horrendously 'superficial'. But is that really worse than complimenting a woman on her eyes? Think about it: what can a woman do about the shape or colour or appearance of her eyes? Nothing; she's born that way. It's genetic. But her ass? That's a product of her lifestyle. A fit, athletic woman will always have a great ass, whereas you can't have a gigantic wide lard-ass unless you've done a lot of things wrong with your diet and lifestyle over the years. So in a way, a woman's ass is far more indicative of her personality and lifestyle than her eyes, isn't it? And that's why I am not just an ass-man, but a proud ass-man."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On 'The Good Old Days': I hear a lot of social conservatives speak of the good old days, when things were better and people had stronger values. When were these good old days, exactly? The 1980s, before the 'War on Terror', when all we had to worry about was thousands of megatons of Soviet nuclear annihilation aimed at us on a hair-trigger? And George Michael was a member of a fucking boy band? The 1950s, when the top income tax rate was 90%, racial segregation was written into law, puritanical TV showed married couples sleeping in separate beds, McCarthy was running witch-hunts to catch 'un-Americans', and Jews were afraid to use their real names in Hollywood credits? Or perhaps the 'good old days' were in the 19th century, which made the 1950s seem downright enlightened by comparison. News flash: there are no good old days. Some things were better, many things were worse. But by all means, if you want to return to the 'good old days', go live in one of the world's many backward shit-hole countries. I hear Nigeria's popular with the knuckle-draggers right now. Just make sure you get your vaccinations before you leave the modern world. It will be our parting gift to your ungrateful ass."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On Sex: I honestly feel sorry for all of you people with lifelong sexual hangups. These hangups mean you can't truly enjoy the one form of pure hedonism left to adults. Kids get candy, toys, ice cream, birthday parties, Christmas morning, the whole nine yards. What do we get? Flavoured coffee? I feel even sorrier for all of you 'family values' losers who say you hate porn but secretly watch it anyway. You know who you are. Maybe you even build up a private stash, until you get caught or suffer a paroxysm of guilt and throw it all away, only to start all over again after briefly going cold turkey. Small wonder the porn industry makes more money than Hollywood. You shame-filled, guilt-ridden, blue-ball sad-sack cases are the only reason that porn stores have those overpriced 'private viewing booths', so you won't have to worry about getting caught. You have my pity. Oh, and by the way, beer is no substitute."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On Self-Taught Experts: The Internet is full of so-called 'self-taught experts': people with a doctorate in Google and a Masters in speed-reading. A desire for lifelong learning is a laudable thing, and by no means am I discouraging it. But there's one thing you get with a real education that you don't get with 'independent research', and that is one word: testing. In a real university, you don't just read the textbook, you face grueling exams and assignments, all of which are marked with a possibility of failure. In short, reading the text is not enough; you have to prove that you understood it. If university were like the average 'self-taught' expert's regimen, there would be no exams. No tests. No assignments. They'd just tell you to read the text and then assume that you must understand it now. I ask you: would you trust a medical doctor who graduated from such a program? Of course not. So by all means, people should try to learn on their own because it expands their horizons and keeps their minds sharp. But don't tell yourself that it's the same as being a qualified expert, because it's not. If you think you understand thermodynamics and somebody with a university education in the subject tells you that you've got it all wrong, don't try to bluff your way through an argument. Shut the fuck up and listen to what he has to say. Google is not a university. It's just a way to find quick links to porn."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On Marriage: It's awesome. Seriously, I am so happy that I found my wife. Leaving her would be like leaving part of me. When I hear these married guys who bitch and moan about how much marriage sucks (even though many of the same guys say it's a 'sacred institution'), I can't help but wonder: do their marriages really suck, or do they just suck at marriage? If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that marriage is not just a state of being; it is a skill which requires technique, just like everything else in life. If your marriages always turn out badly, maybe it's not fate, and maybe it's not because your wife is a harpy, and maybe it's not due to the erosion of traditional values. Maybe it's just because you're doing it wrong. Of course, it's also possible that you chose wrong, but don't be too quick to deflect blame away from yourself. And don't pretend that being a three-time divorcée makes you an expert on marriage. It makes you an expert on failure, not an expert on marriage. If multiple failures were proof of expertise, people would be lining up at Larry King's door to find out how the little troll does it."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On Negligence: Every time you hear about a lawsuit, you will hear a conservative use the phrase 'personal responsibility'. Here's a tip: every time you hear a conservative use the phrase 'personal responsibility', replace it with 'corporate irresponsibility'. Because that's what this phrase really means: it is a clever little rhetorical trick designed to make people think that you can have personal responsibility or corporate responsibility, but not both at the same time. How could it be the defendant's fault if it's the plaintiff's fault, right? It's like saying that I can't possibly be incompetent if you are. How the hell does that make any sense? Negligence awards are a monetary penalty for incompetence, not a murder trial. And guess what: in these cases there is often more than enough incompetence to go around. If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that incompetence is our only truly renewable resource."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "On 'Faith' versus 'Opinion': What's the difference between a religious belief and a personal opinion? Nothing, except for the fact that one of them is so goddamned important that we have to let people carry it into the workplace. Seriously, can you imagine asking your boss to let you shirk your duties because of your personal opinion? Now imagine telling him that you refuse to do a certain job because of your religious beliefs. Huge difference, right? But why? Isn't it possible for someone to have a personal moral belief that he cares about as deeply as any religious belief? Why, then, does the religious person get an exemption from his job duties while the other person does not? Why are religious pharmacists allowed to refuse to dispense the birth control pill without getting fired for not doing their jobs? If I'm a truck driver and I think Wal-Mart is evil, why shouldn't I be allowed to refuse to take deliveries to Wal-Mart? Hmmm, maybe none of this bullshit should be allowed. Maybe people should be expected to act like professionals, and keep their personal beliefs out of their jobs. And if they really find their jobs morally offensive, maybe they should quit. The idea of someone taking a job and then refusing to do it properly because of his beliefs is ridiculous. Especially when he expects to get paid anyway. At least Homer Simpson has a good reason for not doing his job properly: he's an idiot. These people are just weasels."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made."
-- Richard Barnfield, Address to the Nightingale. This song is confidently assigned to Barnfield; it is found in his collection of "Poems in Divers Humours", published in 1598.--Ellis: Specimens, vol. ii. p. 316. Quotation found as sourced by John Bartlett (1820-1905), Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). "Man is his own star; and that soul that can
Be honest is the only perfect man."
-- John Fletcher, Upon an "Honest Man’s Fortune." "An honest man ’s the noblest work of God."--Alexander Pope: Essay on Man, epistle iv. line 248. Robert Burns: The Cotter’s Saturday Night. Quotation found as sourced by John Bartlett (1820-1905), Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). "For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed,
So poets live upon the living light."
-- Philip James Bailey, Festus "...The idea that religion separated mankind from the animals or was somehow necessary for the development of human society is the biggest non sequitur I've heard since the Greeks concluded that the movement of the Sun across the sky must be due to equine locomotion of a flaming chariot.

Religion is arguably an instrument of social control, but since no religious society has ever been able to maintain law and order without the use of physical force, I suspect that this mechanism is far less effective than people believe.

Religion is also said to promote morality, but that is an anomalous claim made by the Abrahamic religions. Most of the religions in world history had to do with explaining how the universe works, and made no effort whatsoever to claim exclusive origin of morality. The ancient Greek religion, for example, has no moral commandments. No claim to exclusive moral authority. No claim that its deities are perfectly just, or impeccably moral. It is the ignorance and historical myopia of the average Christian that lets him maintain the delusion that morality and religion must always be intertwined.

Take a look at the average aboriginal culture. They believed in various animalistic gods and they had some kind of origin story, but when it came time to ask for judgment on what was right or wrong, where did they turn? Tribal elders, not gods or Scriptures."
-- Michael Wong, RE: "What is the use of religion?", StarDestroyer.net "Public debates are a circus act. Written debates are actually far superior on many levels, not least of which is the relative inability to use theatrics."
-- Michael Wong "This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."
-- Polonius, in Hamlet by William Shakespeare "False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."
-- Socrates "We humans are nasty, hairy, smelly, pimply, greasy creatures. We live in a world which is nasty, brutal, and unforgiving. Nature does not care if we live or die; the relentless laws which govern the existence of the universe make no exceptions for life which has evolved on their watch. Life is a callous struggle for survival and reproduction, and one in which we humans have had unprecedented success: never before has a form of life had such control over its environment. Out of the rude world man has shaped civilization; but before man could civilize himself, he was molded by the desperate struggle for survival into a violent, selfish being.

Most impressive of the traits which an uncaring nature instilled into humanity is consciousness; and with that consciousness, man may imbue formerly purposeless objects with meaning. As an example, consider a simple tool: a piece of matter with no purpose, no meaning to its existence beyond the simple fact of its existence; yet, when a man picks it up, he gives it a purpose, a role to play in the tapestry of his life. Man's existence, similarly, possesses no inherent meaning; it is man who gives it to himself. Some so give themselves meaning by irrationally presuming there exists purpose beyond the meaningless struggle we observe and were born from as a species; in so doing, they unconsciously endow their lives with meaning. Nonetheless, the fact people may irrationally assign purpose to themselves does not indicate that is the only manner in which purpose may be reflexively endowed; surely the conscious assignment of purpose is preferable to unconsciously and irrationally assuming the existence of some higher purpose where none appears to exist.

Life, then, is nasty, brutish, and short; and humans are thrust into it with only the instincts we have evolved, the talents we possess, and the consciousness which is characteristic of our species. Wherefore ought humans live? In a universe which cares not for the success or failure of an individual, under brutal and unforgiving natural laws, humans can, and must, endow their lives with purpose. Life is nothing but a tool, and the most powerful one a human can posses; to what end it will be used must be determined by the person living it. Alone and without consciousness, life is simply a collection of molecules with the characteristic that it reproduces; but with sapience, meaningless life may adopt purpose, just like any other piece of matter across which a human may stumble.

Therewithin lies the possibility of hope: without recognizing that he may use his life as a tool to his own purpose, a human must needs despair in the face of unrelenting nature; but with the possibility of shaping his life toward his own ends, a human may create his own hope with his purpose. Life is brutal, unrelenting, and merciless, but from it, we humans may create purpose and hope in our lives."
-- Neal Coleman, "What's The Purpose of Life?" "Speak softly, and carry a big stick."
-- Theodore Roosevelt "The worst thing about these 'why can't the woman just put up the baby for adoption' arguments is that they are nothing more than a red herring. The question of whether abortion is murder has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of whether the woman could have the baby and then give it up for adoption.

Not only are these people stupid and ignorant for acting as though pregnancy and childbirth are trivial things, but even if it were true, their argument would still be invalid. It is still a transparent attempt to refocus the debate on the character of the mother rather than the ethics of the act itself, and it is no less scurrilous than the commonplace tactic of portraying such women as promiscuous whores."
-- Michael Wong "Generations of literary students have wondered how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the credulous spiritualist could have created the brilliantly deductive Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was so credulous he actually believed Harry Houdini could dematerialize to escape from confinement and refused to believe Houdini himself when he explained that he used conventional magicians' techniques. Believers in spiritualism and paranormalism have argued that Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes demonstrates his rationality so clearly that there must be a rational basis for his belief in spiritualism. We can gain some insight by watching Holmes at work in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

From a lost hat, Holmes deduced that the wearer was intelligent, preferred a certain type of hair dressing, had grizzled hair, was once prosperous but had fallen on hard times, had no gas lines in his home, and had marital problems. The inference of intelligence came from the popular 19th century notion that intelligence correlated with brain size, but a large hat may signify nothing more than bushy hair. The inferences about hair style are based on bits of hair and hair cream on the hat.

The elaborate scenario involving the man's life style was based essentially on the hat being a recent and expensive style but now in poor condition. Holmes never really considered the very real possibilities that the hat might have been stolen, lost and then found by someone else, or given away. The man's marital problems were explained by the hat's poor maintenance. Unless, of course, the man were single.

I have to insert my personal heresy here. I have never been particularly impressed with Sherlock Holmes. Most of the stories I have read involve banal and inconsequential mysteries. Furthermore, the stories are rarely mysteries in the modern sense, where clues are presented that challenge the reader to solve the problem as well. Mostly the evidence appears without warning, Holmes explains what it means, and follows it to a conclusion of Doyle's own choosing while myriad other possible interpretations of the evidence are simply ignored.

Holmes is infallible because Doyle writes him that way. He scans the evidence, zeroes in unerringly on the correct interpretation, and rarely has to revise his hypotheses. That's part of his immense appeal. Holmes invariably arrives at the correct solutions, rarely examines alternative explanations except to dispose of them, never encounters evidence that is so ambiguous it cannot be used, and generally views formulating a plausible hypothesis as the solution to the problem.

Given this essentially mystical view of the scientific method, where intuitive methods are infallible and never need correction, it is no mystery at all how Doyle could be a credulous spiritualist. Holmes embodies Conan Doyle's fantasies of omnipotent scientific intuition, which Doyle acted out himself in his investigations of spiritualism. The contrast between Holmes and Doyle is the contrast between how well this approach works in fantasy versus how well it works in real life."
-- Steven Dutch, "Two Literary Non-Mysteries" "Is the following number sequence random: 592653589793238462643383279? It not only looks random: it is random. But lacking in meaning? No. These are the digits of pi beginning with the fourth decimal place.

Random does not mean 'meaningless.' The scientific meaning of random is that something cannot be predicted with better accuracy than that predicted by statistics. The phenomenon is its own simplest description. Biological systems are far too complex to describe or predict mathematically. We have incomplete information, and significant events like climate change or asteroid impact are unpredictable."
-- Steven Dutch, "Top Ten Myths About Evolution" "Humans and great apes had a common ancestor about 5 million years ago. Humans and monkeys had a common ancestor about 50 million years ago. Nowhere, except in the most illiterate anti-evolution literature, will you find a claim that humans evolved from monkeys."
-- Steven Dutch, "Top Ten Myths About Evolution" "One of the propaganda techniques employed by the radical religious right in this country [United States of America] is to author a great many books and then to use quotes from each other's works as accurate research scholarship. The bibliographies and footnotes will be packed with seemingly authoritative references...until one takes the time to investigate the backgrounds of each of the named authors. That is when the pattern of religiously motivated collusion begins to clearly emerge. Then names like McGuire, Weems, Sparks, Morris, Marshall, Barton and Lederer begin to appear over and over again as the reference sources."
-- Buffman, "Battle of the Quotes" "Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called 'The Pledge'; The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called 'The Turn'; The magician makes his ordinary some thing do something extraordinary. Now if you're looking for the secret... you won't find it, that's why there's a third act called, 'The Prestige'; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it because you're not really looking. You don't really want to know the secret... You want to be fooled."
-- Cutter, The Prestige (2006) "Face it, everyone. Religion is not a source of moral behavior. It's a source of tribalism and obedience to authority, which sometimes coincides with respectable morality, but isn't necessarily associated with it. We have to find our virtue in one true thing, our common humanity, and these ancient superstitions actually interfere with instruction in how to be good by encrusting it with nonsense."
-- PZ Myers, "The unspeakable vileness of religious law", Pharyngula, 22 February, 2007 "I'm sick of the insult 'activist'. Are they saying that judges should be passive? They are hired to do a job, aren't they? If they want civil servants who don't really do anything, maybe they should replace judges with unionized city workers."
-- Michael Wong "May I never lose you, oh, my generous host, oh, my universe. Just as the air you breathe, and the light you enjoy are for you, so you are for me."
-- Primo Levi, Man's Friend "From the work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, we know that human beings have a fundamentally egocentric conception of the world. Growing up in modern society means learning to accept the existence of an external world separate from oneself. It is hard. Most of humankind, for most of its history, never learned to distinguish the internal world of thoughts and feelings with the external world of objects and events. ... Cutting this connection, which is necessary before science can develop, goes against the grain of human nature."
-- Alan Cromer, Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature Of Science (1993) "Babies start out with a fundamentally magic view of the world: they cry, things happen. So it's intuitive that the universe should respond to our wishes. Some people absolutely never outgrow resentment of the fact that the universe doesn't always follow through, and a lot end up in prison or dead as a result. Others learn that there are limits but always cling to the hope that some gimmick will get around them. A commitment to an objectively real universe independent of our own desires takes real discipline and conscious decision. So people who don't make such a commitment are all but certain to transform their religion into magic."
-- Steven Dutch, "God's Grandchildren" "If you would have your slaves remain docile, teach them hymns."
-- Ed Weathers, "The Empty Box" "The wise learn many things from their enemies."
-- Aristophanes, The Birds "...the fact that Hume's worries make sense, the fact that Wittgenstein can say things like 'our spade is turned,' does not place every spurious claim to knowledge on an equal footing with science. The discomfort induced in mathematics by Godel does not make the doctrine of Mormonism even slightly more plausible. There is still a difference between jumping a puddle and walking on water."
-- Sam Harris, "Is Religion 'Built Upon Lies'?" Brahe: "An MMO [massively multiplayer online (gaming)] for Warhammer 40k sounds good, but I wonder how they're going to manage all those races."
Gabriel: "Well, isn't the enemy of your enemy like, your friend? Or whatever? Can't they team up?"
Brahe: "Not exactly. In this setting, the enemy of your enemy is still a floating, greasy, armored brain."
Gabriel: "Well, what about his enemy? Maybe you could be friends with him."
Brahe: "No, because that guy is a mechanical horror in an undying battle shell. He sails from world to world in a flying tomb, serving gods who eat hope."
Gabriel: "So, probably not."
Brahe: "Odds are low."
-- "In The Grim Etcetera", Penny Arcade "Let us hope ... that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away."
-- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), U.S. president. address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sep. 30, 1859. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, p. 482, Rutgers University Press (1953, 1990). "The answer of Solon on the question, 'Which is the most perfect popular govemment,' has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, 'That,' says he, 'where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution.' Solon lived about 500 years before Christ."
-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, pt. 2, ch. 3 "Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from 'afternoon church,' -- as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone -- gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idlleness is eager now -- eager for amusement: prone to excursion trains, art-museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels: prone even to scientific theorising, and cursory peeps through microscopes..."
-- George Eliot, Adam Bede, ch. 52 "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny...'"
-- Isacc Asimov "If you chase two rabbits, both will escape."
-- Proverb (Chinese) "We train our young boys to drop bombs on women and children but we won't let them write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's 'immoral'..."
-- Col. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now "One of the most common misconceptions about evolution is that it is a steady climb towards perfection, working over time to remove every defect. In fact, natural selection is not a skilled artisan but, to use Richard Dawkins' phrase, a blind watchmaker. Evolution is a process of tinkering, of incremental change, and of modification of old structures to suit new purposes. Sometimes this can lead to a cul-de-sac of adaptation, where a certain trait or structure is globally suboptimal but locally optimal: it is provably inferior at what it does, and yet natural selection blocks improvement because any change would have to begin by temporarily making things even worse. Evolutionary legacies such as the vestigial appendix, the backwards human retina, and other genetic anachronisms give testament to the way such tradeoffs have shaped our species' past."
-- Adam Lee, "Book Review: Survival of the Sickest" "There are two people in every photograph: the photographer and the viewer."
-- Ansel Adams "Even when 'hard science' theories are disproven, they are still generally quite accurate. Someone just comes along with an even more accurate theory, or one that works better in exotic situations. That's why 99% of engineering is still done with good ol' Newtonian physics."
-- Michael Wong "To the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained"
-- Doctor Who, "The Robots Of Death" (1976) "I built this during the night. I put a button on it! I wish to press the button but I don't know what will happen if I do!"
-- Gune, Titan A.E. "The price of victory is eternal boredom."
-- Aquatain "You know the biggest problem with the 'don't discuss religion' taboo? Nobody expects religious people to obey it. Oh no, you've all seen this: you're at a social gathering and someone finds some excuse to segue into a blatant statement of his religious beliefs.

A good example: I was at a function a while ago and during some conversation which was political but in which I was taking a 'both sides suck' stance (the only 'safe' stance in politics), I made the off-handed comment that you can't really trust anybody in this life except for yourself and your family, and sometimes not even your family. Naturally, some other guy said 'you forgot one other person you can trust. Jesus Christ.'

Now, at that moment Rebecca came along and whisked me away, possibly because she detected danger with her Spousey-Sense. But what normally happens at a social gathering when someone does that? Oh naturally, no one is allowed to say anything. Oh sure, he can say that, but if I respond by pointing out that I would trust Jesus about as far as I can throw Kirstie Alley, then all of a sudden I'm a horrible, horrible man. Meanwhile he's just A-OK! Bringing up his religious beliefs for no reason whatsoever and shoving them in my face, but if I were to respond with a similarly firm statement of my belief (or lack thereof), then I've broken the taboo and he hasn't.

How fair is that?"
-- Michael Wong "Let's face it, when debating religion most people are aiming at one of the monotheistic religions. And there is a pretty good way to estimate the probability of a monotheistic deity existing, by noting the following facts:

Fact #1: Despite many claims to the contrary, supernatural religious beliefs all have precisely the same amount of empirical supporting evidence: zero. Hence the importance of 'faith'.

Fact #2: Supernatural religious beliefs are justified by pointing out that you cannot absolutely prove them false. However, this justification can be equally applied to an infinite number of possible arbitrary beliefs.

Fact #3: Monotheistic supernatural religious beliefs are unusual in the sense that they are exclusive: not only do they postulate some kind of supernatural phenomenon, but they also require that all other possible supernatural phenomena are false.

Take those three facts together and you will find that the probability of a monotheistic deity is 1/x, where x is the number of possible supernatural phenomena which would all have precisely the same justification as the monotheistic deity does, hence the same probability of being true, yet which all must be false for the monotheistic belief to be true. Since x is infinity, the probability of a monotheistic god approaches zero."
-- Michael Wong "...individualism as an ethical ideal is a fairly new idea, spawned from the corpulent luxury of a self-indulgent generation and retrofitted onto the history of thriving western nations by historical revisionists with stars in their eyes and shit for brains.

In the past, at some point. every society had to emphasize collective ideals, because that was the only thing that kept them alive. It is nothing more than historically ignorant self-indulgent navel-gazing that has led anyone in the modern western world to think otherwise. The roots of all morality are literally grounded in a collectivist ideal.

That's not to say I oppose individualism, but rather, that I think it should coexist with collectivism in a balance. Far too many modern western navel-gazers think that individualism somehow defeated collectivism as a moral principle, and that collectivism has been thrown onto the dustheap of history.

PS. Just for an exercise, try examining the mythology of 'rugged American frontier individualism' with a critical eye, by looking at the actual historical lifestyles of pioneer villages and how everyone had to work together in order to survive. The fact that isolated communities often thought little of the federal government has been distorted into 'rugged individualism' when in fact they were more like small collectives (and rather rigidly conformist ones at that)."
-- Michael Wong "Novelty plus dread equals overreaction."
-- Bruce Schneier, "Rare Risk and Overreactions" "It is as if a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and kinsmen were to get a surgeon to heal him, and he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know by what man I was wounded, whether he is of the warrior caste, or a brahmin, or of the agricultural, or the lowest caste. Or if he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know of what name or family the man is -- or whether he is tall, or short, or of middle height... Before knowing all this, that man would die."
-- Buddhist parable of the poison arrow, "Thus Have I Heard: Buddhist Parables and Stories" "Not only do they believe in nothing, they think that a Belief in Nothing is a mark of sophistication and wisdom. Those who believe in things too much -- who display political passion or who take their convictions and ideals seriously... are either naive or, worse, are the crazy, irrational, loudmouth masses and radicals who disrupt the elevated, measured world of the high-level, dispassionate Beltway sophisticates.... They are interested in, even obsessed with, every aspect of the political process except for deeply held political beliefs -- the only part that really matters or that has any real worth."
-- Glenn Greenwald "Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom."
-- Thomas Paine, Common Sense "I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD."
-- William Lloyd Garrison, inaugural editorial in the anti-slavery journal The Liberator, 1 January 1831 "But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.' Was not Amos an extremist for justice: 'Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.' Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: 'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.' Was not Martin Luther an extremist: 'Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.' And John Bunyan: 'I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.' And Abraham Lincoln: 'This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.' And Thomas Jefferson: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...' So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"
-- Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", 16 April 1963 "The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense."
-- Tom Clancy, attributed variant of how he had really expressed the idea in an interview on Larry King Live: "The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense." I just happen to like more how the variant phrases the idea. "Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it."
-- Stephen B. Leacock, "The Perfect Salesman," The Garden of Folly, 1924 "Memorization is an over-rated skill."
-- Martin Kemmish "Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity."
-- George Bernard Shaw "Don't be ridiculous; there is no value whatsoever in 'accepting' other peoples' views. Views by themselves are worthless too. What matters is the reasoning used to arrive at that view, so what you need to do in a debate is to understand the other person's reasoning. 'Accepting his view' is just plain stupid."
-- Michael Wong "Now! This is it! Now is the time to choose! Die and be free of pain or live and fight your sorrow! Now is the time to shape your stories! Your fate is in your hands!"
-- Auron, Final Fantasy X "The worst thing about solipsists is that this idiocy is usually a step up for them. Most solipsists, in my experience, come from a religious background in which absolute certainty is applied to all manner of things that are not only uncertain, but utterly unfounded. They move from that to the shocking realization that this absolute certainty is false, and then they begin to realize that nothing is absolutely certain.

The problem is that they have not yet moved on to the next level of comprehension, which is to understand that one's thinking cannot be black and white, and that one must learn how to develop comprehension of varying degrees of certainty in order to develop any kind of functional epistomology."
-- Michael Wong "People are bad at allowing empiricism and logic to overcome intuition. People rely far too much on their intuition when dealing with unfamiliar or foreign situations. Intuition may work wonderfully for something you've actually got a lot of experience with (because it's really just the subconscious manifestation of your past experience), but when you're moving into uncharted territory it's worse than useless."
-- Michael Wong "The most touching epitaph I ever encountered was on the tombstone of the printer of Edinburgh. It said simply: 'He kept down the cost and set the type right.'"
-- Gregory Nunn "Keep no secrets of thyself from thyself."
-- Proverb (Greek) "Bitter the jest when satire comes too near truth and leaves a sharp sting behind it."
-- Tacitus "A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
-- Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless (1992) "It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."
-- Alfred Adler, in Phyllis Bottome's Alfred Adler: A Biography, ch. 5 "Everyone's quick to blame the alien."
-- Aeschylus, The Suppliant Maidens "We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain."
-- William Rounseville Alger "People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned."
-- James Baldwin, "No Name in the Street", The Price of the Ticket "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
-- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass "He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever."
-- Proverb (Chinese) "Can logic defeat fanaticism? Unfortunately not. At the end of the day, the greatest weapon secularists have against religious fanaticism is not logic; it is the obnoxious tendency of religious people to try and force others to change the way they live their lives.

If creationists spent all of their time and energy attacking evolution rather than trying to take away peoples' porn and generally dictate peoples' private lives to them, they'd actually be a lot more successful. It's that obnoxious behaviour that drives so many people out of their waiting arms, not the horrible gaps in their logic. Most ordinary people don't really know what logic is, but they do know what it means when somebody else is constantly sticking his nose into their business."
-- Michael Wong "I was reading the dictionary the other day. I thought it was a poem about everything."
-- Steven Wright "Dad, I'd like to have a little talk."
"Um...ok."
"As the wage earner here, its your responsibility to show some consumer confidence and start buying things that will get the economy going and create profits and employment. Here's a list of some big-ticket items I'd like for Christmas. I hope I can trust you to do whats right for our country."
"I've got to stop leaving the Wall Street Journal around."
-- Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes "Do you believe in the Devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?"
"I'm not sure that man needs the help."
-- Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes "If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure."
-- Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 262. "[W]hen the martyr's righteous forebrain is exploded by the executioner's bullet and his mind disintegrates, what then? Can we safely assume that all those millions of neural circuits will be reconstituted in an immaterial state, so the conscious mind carries on?"
-- Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 245. "...when people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid."
-- Bertrand Russell, "Theory of Knowledge" "...Man can contemplate his own mortality and finds the thought intolerable. Any animal will struggle to protect itself from a threat of death. Faced with a predator, it flees, hides, fights or employs some other defensive mechanism, such as death-feigning or the emission of stinking fluids. There are many self-protection mechanisms, but they all occur as a response to an immediate danger. When man contemplates his future death, it is as if, by thinking of it, he renders it immediate. His defence is to deny it. He cannot deny that his body will die and rot--the evidence is too strong for that; so he solves the problem by the invention of an immortal soul--a soul which is more 'him' than even his physical body is 'him.' If this soul can survive in an afterlife, then he has successfully defended himself against the threatened attack on his life. This gives the agents of the gods a powerful area of support. All they need to do is to remind their followers constantly of their mortality and to convince them that the afterlife itself is under the personal management of the particular gods they are promoting. The self-protective urges of their worshippers will do the rest."
-- Desmond Morris, "Religious Displays", Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour, 1977, Abrams, New York, p. 149-51. "...a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests.... The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
-- Albert Einstein, address at the Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939, published in Out of My Later Years, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. "...anyone who writes about "Darwin's theory of evolution" in the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently."
-- Ernst Mayr Bart: "Why the crap do we have to go to church anyway?"
Marge: "You just answered your own question with that commode mouth. Besides, you kids need to learn morals and decency and how to love your fellow man."
[in church]
Lovejoy: "And with flaming swords, the Aromites did pierce the eyes of their fellow men and did feast on what flowed forth. Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh..."
-- The Simpsons Calvin: "I think we have got enough information now, don't you?"
Hobbes: "All we have is one 'fact' that you made up."
Calvin: "That's plenty. By the time we add an introduction, a few illustrations and a conclusion, it'll look like a graduate thesis."
-- Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes Calvin: "You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood."
Hobbes: "What mood is that?"
Calvin: "Last-minute panic."
-- Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes "What, are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I'm the goddamn Batman."
-- Batman, "All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder" #2 "Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation -- never enter into final peace alone; but forever and everywhere will I live and strive for the universal redemption of every creature throughout all worlds. Until all are delivered, never will I leave the world of sin, sorrow and struggle, but will remain where I am."
-- Buddhist bodhisattvas vow "Where is my light? / My light is in me. / Where is my hope? / My hope is in me. / Where is my strength? / My strength is in me. / And in you. And in you."
-- Sherwin Wine, "Where is My Light?" "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."
-- Mark Twain "Ever see what them computa bitchez do to numbas? It ain't natural. Numbas ain't supposed to be code, they supposed to quantify shit."
-- "Herbert Kornfeld Rules!" "You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is."
-- Steven Wright on fitness "What they imagine to be a window through which they can see God is in truth a mirror held up to their own faces."
-- Adam Lee, "Why Do They Care?" "You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."
-- Malcolm X "The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities -- that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future -- will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands."
-- Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway "2000 Chairman's Letter" "On Highbrow Entertainment: News flash for all the pseudo-intellectuals out there: watching 'smart' movies or having a preference for well-regarded art does not necessarily make you an intellectual. Skillful acting and screenwriting do not osmotically transfer intellect to the viewer. And for every person who 'appreciates' highbrow entertainment because he's good at picking up subtle nuances, there's a hundred people who 'appreciate' it because they read the reviews and they know they're supposed to appreciate it, otherwise they lose their snob club membership cards. The way some idiots talk about their entertainment, I'm starting to wonder if they put their favourite movies on their resumes when they apply for a job. 'You see sir, I'm totally qualified for this position because I enjoy the musical stylings of Franz Liszt, and the subtleties of Mamet.' You can really smell the residue of the 19th century aristocracies when you see people trying to compete on the basis of their leisure tastes. It smells musty, and old. Just like Bill O'Reilly, but with subtitles."
-- Michael Wong, "1-Minute Blurbs About Everything" (2007) "If only more people understood what Occam's Razor is; most people think that it means the theory which can be expressed in fewer words wins."
-- Michael Wong "...when you say 'I have a background in ...', anyone who has experience reading inflated resumes knows that it means almost nothing. Unless you describe specific recognized credentials in those fields, it could mean as little as 'I took an interest in the subject and read a couple of websites.'"
-- Michael Wong "Any philosophy that can be 'put in a nutshell' belongs there."
-- Sydney J. Harris "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."
-- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin "Seagulls have an intellegence network that puts the CIA to shame."
-- Lillian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Knew A Cardinal "This is the world of private hunches, and no respect for evidence. Reason has built the modern world. It is a precious, but also a fragile, thing, which can be corroded by apparently harmless irrationality. We must favor verifiable evidence over private feeling, otherwise we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would obscure the truth."
-- Richard Dawkins, "The Enemies of Reason", pt. 1 "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis "Socrates thought that if all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most persons would be contented to take their own and depart."
-- Plutarch, Consolation to Apollonius "When people tolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient enjoyment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is caring for nobody but themselves."
-- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism "A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought."
-- Lord Peter Wimsey, in Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers "A penny saved is a penny earned."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack "When the wine enters, out goes the truth."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack "Fish and visitors stink after three days."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack "Apollo said that everyone's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be."
-- Xenophon, Recollections of Socrates "The great American culinary invention is the Dorito."
-- Michael Wong "You have paid the price for your lack of vision."
-- Emperor Palpatine, Return of the Jedi "Isn't this religious, ah yes. The eternal battle between good and evil, saint and sinners... but you're still not having any fun!"
-- Castor Troy, Face/Off "I was nobody. But that don't matter either, you know? 'Cause I was thinkin', it really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head, either. 'Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood."
-- Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, in Rocky James Bond: "Do you expect me to talk?"

Goldfinger: "No, Mister Bond, I expect you to die!"
-- Goldfinger "One man is a lunatic. A hundred men are a cult. A million men are a religion."
-- an old saying "Part of it is that thing that Americans marketers are so good at: misleading use of language. Look at the way they call it a 'home equity loan'. That sounds happy. It sounds positive. It sounds positively beneficial, like something is going to grow for you. If they were forced to give it a more accurate name, like the 'give away part of your house' loan, I wonder if people would be as upbeat about the things."
-- Michael Wong, Re: "A debt culture gone awry" "To me, a bumper sticker is like a little sign that says, 'Hey, let’s never hang out.'"
-- Demetri Martin "Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water. / Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better; / It has no equal. / The weak can overcome the strong; / The supple can overcome the stiff. / Under heaven everyone knows this, / Yet no one puts it into practice. / Therefore the sage says: / He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people / is fit to rule them. / He who takes upon himself the country's disasters deserves / to be king of the universe. / The truth often seems paradoxical."
-- Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, ch. 78 "Even if an animal had the capacity for abstract thought, we wouldn't know.

The biggest thing that distinguishes us from the other animals is that we found a way to preserve the thoughts of our most brilliant members. Let's be realistic about this: if we were limited to the thoughts of average people, how advanced would our civilization be by now? We'd be lucky to have advanced beyond hunter-gatherer societies.

All throughout history, it has been a tiny fraction of humans who have driven the entire species forward, by coming up with brilliant ideas that would not have occurred to the average person. Someone had to invent the wheel. Someone had to invent agriculture. Someone had to invent irrigation. Someone had to figure out how to smelt metals. Someone had to invent gunpowder, or the microchip.

Our particular gift was the ability to spread those ideas among the people who weren't smart enough to think of them on their own, preserve those ideas, and pass them on to future generations.

There could very well be an occasional dolphin who is born brilliant, but it doesn't do the other dolphins any good, because his abilities will die with him."
-- Michael Wong, re: "Religion the only thing that seperate us from animals?" "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-- Proverb (Chinese) "That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."
-- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" "What's a sundial in the shade?"
-- Benjamin Franklin "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
-- General Sir Charles Napier "You see I don't care much about acquaintances. When I can come & go, & not be misunderstood, & can be at liberty & unweighted, uncriticized, unsuspected, as part of the very household, as at your house & Mrs.Fairbanks's my "friendship" (as we term it) really comes nearer being worship than anything else I can liken it to but to be a ceremonious visitor; a person of set hours & seasons; a foreigner in the household, without naturalization papers; an alien from whose ears the language of the fireside is withheld; an effigy to poke politenesses at & offend with affabilities that are hollow, invitations that are not meant, & complementary lies that are as thin & perishable as the air they are made of--this is Acquaintanceship, & very little of it goes a great way with me."
-- Mark Twain, letter to Olivia Langdon, 3/6/1869 "So many fucking scumbags on my forum... I used to bitch that all the topics were superficial garbage. There was a topic called 'What shoes do you buy,' and I didn't like it because it was stupid and silly. Now, I have to sit here and listen to assholes defending rape, slavery, and the existence of AIDS. God, I would love to talk about what kind of shoes I buy, instead of dealing with scum."
-- Brad Johnson, re: "Slavery as Seen in the Bible" "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."
-- William Wordsworth, letter to his wife (April 29 1812) "Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
-- Anton Chekhov "Vigorous writing is concise."
-- William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style, ch. 3: "Elementary Principles of Composition" "You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance."
-- Ray Bradbury "Nanking, capital of China, had fallen to the Japanese on December 13, 1937. As the Japanese entered the capital, only unarmed civilians remained. The virtorious troops plastered the city with billboards featuring a smiling Japanese soldier handing a bowl of rice to an appreciative Chinese child. The poster proclaimed the peaceful intentions of 'co-prosperity.' But instead the Chinese suffered an orgy of torture and death.
In less than a month Japanese troops, with the encouragement of their officers, killed up to 350,000 Chinese civilians. Pregnant women were marched to one killing field where Japanese placed bets on the sex of the fetus about to tumble from its mother's womb, cut by a samurai sword. In another area of town drunken soldiers laughed and tossed babies in the air to be skewered on the ends of their buddies' beyonets. Dogs grew to fat to walk, feasting on the corpses in the streets.
Three hundred fifty thousand: That amounted to more civilians dying in one city in one month than died in entire countries during the entire war. In six years of combat France lost 108,000 civilians; Belgium 101,000; the Netherlands 242,000. The Japanese in Nanking killed even more than the atomic bombs later would. (Hiroshima had 140,000 dead, Nagasaki 70,000.)
The Japanese 'loot all, kill all, burn all' scorched-earth policy in North China would eventually reduce the population from forty-four million to twenty-five million. Co-prosperity indeed."
-- James Bradley and Ron Powers, Flags of Our Fathers, pp. 65-66 "What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to preservere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?"
-- Winston Churchill, on the Japanese, 1942, quoted at the beginning of ch. 3 of Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley and Ron Powers "If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on heaven's scenes
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines."
-- from "The Marine's Hymn" "Perhaps you are too fucking stupid to recognize that anything you do is as much a product of your social environment as it is of your individual labours. It is perhaps the crowning arrogance of our time that dipshits such as yourself honestly think that you are where you are solely due to your own individual efforts, and that you owe society nothing."
-- Michael Wong, re: "Libertarianism - What's the appeal?" "Over three million died fighting for the emperor, but when the war was over he pretended it was not his responsibility. What kind of man does that?"
-- Saburo Sakai, 1994 Interview "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
-- Margaret Wolfe Hungerford "Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds."
-- Dorothy L. Sayers, The Psychology of Advertising "Soon after he [Frederick Douglass, circa 1840] took to the field for antislavery, he wrote a candid letter to his fellow communicants of the Zion chapel, saying, as [the Rev. Thomas] James reported, that he had to 'cut loose from the church' because he had found the American church, writ large, to be a 'bulwark of American slavery.'"
-- William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991, p. 85 "To see how political tides change, the Republican platform of 1876 carried a plank that advocated a constitutional amendment forbidding the use of public money for any sectarian school."
-- Robert L. Maddox, Baptist minister and speech writer and religious liaison for President Jimmy Carter, Separation of Church and State: Guarantor of Religious Freedom, New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1987, p. 102 "If we had nothing else to boast of, we could claim with justice that first among the nations we of this country made it an article of organic law that the relations between man and his Maker were a private concern into which other men had no right to intrude."
-- David Dudley Field, 1805-1894, American lawyer, first president of the International Law Association, in an address in Chicago, 1893. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 487 "[However, many reputable organizations and prominent individuals defended the decision {U.S. Supreme Court decision banning state-composed and mandated school prayer, Engel v. Vitale},] among them a number of liberal Protestant ministers. Most prominent of these was The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, revered black leader, who called it 'a sound and good decision reaffirming something that is basic in our Constitution, namely separation of church and state.'"
-- Leo Pfeffer, "Prayer in Public Schools: The Court's Decisions," in the "Church and State" issue of National Forum: The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Winter, 1988, p. 26 "Voluntary, individual, silent prayer has never been banned or discouraged in the public schools. The Supreme Court has banned state-sponsored religious services. Those who advocate prayer services in the public schools do not want voluntary prayer. They want the government to be officially involved in promoting and sponsoring prayer services so as to put pressure on children to engage in public prayer. They apparently do not care whether parents want their children to engage in public prayer or be indoctrinated with sectarian religious ideas. The object is to provide a captive classroom audience that will be exposed to the prayers of those with a religious message, which they deliver in the form of a prayer."
-- John M. Swomley, Religious Liberty and the Secular State: The Constitutional Context, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987, p. 128 "... It is accordingly on this battlefield [religious belief], almost solely, that the rights of the individual against society have been asserted on broad grounds of principle, and the claim of society to exercise authority over dissentients openly controverted. The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale. In the minds of almost all religious persons, even in the most tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is admitted with tacit reserves. One person will bear with dissent in matters of church government, but not of dogma; another can tolerate everybody, short of a Papist or an Unitarian; another, every one who believes in revealed religion; a few extend their charity a little further, but stop at the belief in a God and in a future state. Wherever the sentiment of the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found to have abated little of its claim to be obeyed."
-- John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, and Harriet Taylor Mill, ?-1858, "Chapter I: Introductory," On Liberty, 1859; reprinted in Currin V. Shields, ed., On Liberty, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1956, p. 11 "You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."
-- James Thurber (1894-1961), U.S. humorist, illustrator. Moral of "The Owl Who Was God," Fables for Our Time (1940) "Beggars should be no choosers."
-- John Heywood, Proverbs. Part i. Chap. x "Accident is the mother of invention."
-- Proverb (American) "I figured I needed a gimmick, so I dreamed up the drawl, the squint, and a way of moving that meant to suggest that I wasn't looking for trouble but would just as soon throw a bottle at your head as not."
-- John Wayne, 1962, in Melinda Corey and George Ochoa, comps., "Westerns," The Man in Lincoln's Nose 1990 "Our intentions tend to be much more real to us than our actions, and this can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding with other people, to whom our actions tend to be much more real than our intentions."
-- E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed "It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it."
-- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre "[Caesar] slept generally in his chariots or litters, employing even his rest in pursuit of action."
-- Plutarch (46 AD-120 AD), "Caesar," Parallel Lives Dryden edition, 1693 "Great Talkers, little Doers."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack "When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."
-- Henry J. Kaiser, in David St. Leger, comp., A Treasury of Wisdom and Inspiration (page 206) "Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action.... The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is always being prevented -- and then do nothing."
-- Sóren Kierkegaard, journal, 9 March 1846, tr. Alexander Dru, 1938 "His bark is worse than his bite."
-- Proverb (American) "Think before you act."
-- Pythagoras, adapted, in Thomas Benfield Harbottle, comp., Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (page 488), 1897 "Meaning is an understanding that is derived from actual objects. The objects will be exactly what they are whether or not something has an understanding of them. So, yes, without minds there won't be any meaning, and if a tree falls in the forest with no one there to hear it then it won't make a sound, but the tree is still there and its fall still sends out waves of energy. Let's not act as if the universe comes to a grinding halt because of an absence of meaning."
-- Karim Temple, re: "Componet Dilemma" "Despise not Counsel. A Man is never nearer to ruin than when he trusts too much to his own Wisdom."
-- Thomas Fuller, comp., Introductio ad Prudentiam "If the Counsel be good, no Matter who gave it."
-- Thomas Fuller, comp., Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs "Anger is never without a Reason, but seldom with a good One."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack "During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes. Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, 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, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A 1934 Symposium published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941; from Einstein's Out of My Later Years, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970, pp. 26-27 "Not because Socrates has said it, but because it is really in my nature, and perhaps a little more than it should be, I look upon all humans as my fellow-citizens, and would embrace a Pole as I would a Frenchman, subordinating this national tie to the common and universal one."
-- Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), French essayist. "Of Vanity," The Essays (Les Essais), bk. III, ch. 9, Abel Langelier, Paris (1588) "Socrates... said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
-- Plutarch (46?-c. 120), "On Banishment," Plutarch’s Morals, rev. William W. Goodwin, vol. 3, p. 19 (1871) "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put."
-- Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British statesman, writer. Quoted in The Complete Plain Words, "The Handling of Words," Ernest Gowers (1954).

Said to be a marginal comment by Churchill against a sentence that clumsily avoided ending with a preposition. "Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so paragraphs must fit into another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages."
-- Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British statesman, writer. Roving Commission: My Early Life, Scribner (1930) "I pray for no more youth / To perish before its prime; / That Revenge and iron-heated War / May fade with all that has gone before / Into the night of time."
-- Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.)--John Lewin, The House of Atreus, p. 110 (1966). This modern version is an adaptation of the Oresteia; the lines above are from Eumenides (The Furies) "It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath."
-- Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Frag. 385 "Bronze is the mirror of the form; wine, of the heart."
-- Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Frag. 384 "Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts: / Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured / Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed / By hymns of praise. From him alone of all / The powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof."
-- Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), Frag. 146 (trans. by Plumptre) "The saying goes that the gods leave a town once it is captured."
-- Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), The Seven Against Thebes, l. 217 "We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), U.S. statesman, writer. Remark, July 4, 1776, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Quoted in Ben Franklin Laughing, P.M. Zall (1980).

Replying to John Hancock’s remark that the revolutionaries should be unanimous in their action. "Necessity never made a good bargain."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), U.S. statesman, writer. Poor Richard’s Almanack (April 1735), The Complete Poor Richard’s Almanacks (1970) "If you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. This sum may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), U.S. statesman, writer. Autobiography, ch. 8 (written 1771-1790, published 1868) "Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned and well placed, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), U.S. statesman, writer. Autobiography, ch. 8 (written 1771-1790, published 1868).

Said of Irish itinerant preacher the Reverend Mr. Whitefield, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1739. "Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), U.S. statesman, writer. Letter, July 27, 1783, to naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society. Complete Works, vol. 8, ed. John Bigelow (1887-1888) "Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), U.S. statesman, writer. Autobiography, ch. 9 (written 1771-1790, published 1868) "Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. At least you will, by such conduct, stand the best chance for such consequences."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), U.S. statesman, writer. Letter, Aug. 9, 1768. Complete Works, vol. 4, ed. John Bigelow (1887-1888) "The First Amendment means that the government can't put you in jail for expressing yourself. It doesn't mean that a pissed-off neighbour can't sue you for emotional abuse."
-- Michael Wong, re: "Legal Woes For Westboro Baptist Church" "If you would not be forgotten, / as soon as you are dead and rotten, / either write things worth reading / or do things worth the writing."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), U.S. statesman, writer. Poor Richard’s Almanac, May (1738).

This aphorism has also been credited to Pliny. "'Darwinism is immoral.'" People often think this because 'survival of the fittest' is considered a very callous social policy. However, Darwinian evolution is not a social policy! It is a scientific theory, and it has nothing to do with morality one way or another. It does not recommend 'survival of the fittest' as a moral ideal or a social policy; it merely states that it happens in nature. One could just as easily say that the law of gravity is 'immoral' because of all the falling deaths every year."
-- Michael Wong, "Popular Misconceptions About Evolution" "'Humans are the most highly evolved species.'" This misconception assumes that evolution has some kind of plan, and that we are its ultimate product. This is completely wrong (not to mention egotistical). The imperfect nature of biological reproduction generates diversity, and the resulting diverse animal populations must struggle to survive and reproduce. In the African savannah, this process allowed our ancestors to thrive, resulting in us. In the caves of Venezuela, deadly foot-long armoured centipedes sit atop the food chain. In a Japanese waste-water facility, this diversity resulted in a mutated form of bacteria that lives on man-made nylon. Creationists tend to assume a plan for evolution because they project their own mindset onto it, and because they want to believe that everything leads to humans. However, from a biological standpoint, we are simply not that special."
-- Michael Wong, "Popular Misconceptions About Evolution" "The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children."
-- Euripides, Phrixus. Frag. 970 "Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud -- and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll "Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;"
-- William Wordsworth (1770-1850), British poet. Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (l. 177-180). . .

The Poems; Vol. 1 [William Wordsworth]. John O. Hayden, ed. (1977, repr. 1990) Penguin Books. "I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine."
-- John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 12 May 1780 "...extra redundant information can actually distract your limited attentional resources away from the defining attributes of that object. Hence the aphorism 'more is less' in Art"
-- Drs. Ramachandran and Hirstein, Journal of Consciousness Studies (1999), p. 24 "The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved."
-- A.J. Ayer (1910-1989), British philosopher. "The Concept of Freedom," The Meaning of Life and Other Essays (1990) "Time counts and keeps countin', and we knows now finding the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride. But that's our trek, we gotta' travel it. And there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna' lead. Still in all, every night we does the tell, so that we 'member who we was and where we came from... but most of all we 'members the man that finded us, him that came the salvage. And we lights the city, not just for him, but for all of them that are still out there. 'Cause we knows there come a night, when they sees the distant light, and they'll be comin' home."
-- Helen Buday as Savannah Nix, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome "I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself."
-- Isaac Asimov, I, Asimov New York: Doubleday, 1994 "That place that does contain / My books, the best companions, is to me / A glorious court, where hourly I converse / With the old sages and philosophers; / And sometimes, for variety, I confer / With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels; / Calling their victories, if unjustly got, / Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy, / Deface their ill-placed statues"
-- Francis Beaumont (1586-1616) and John Fletcher (1576-1625), The Elder Brother, Act I, sc. ii, L. 177 "The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas -- a place where history comes to life."
-- Norman Cousins (1915- ), cited in ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p. 475 "'Children, don't speak so coarsely,' said Mr. Webster, who had a vague notion that some supervision should be exercised over his daughters' speech, and that a line should be drawn, but never knew quite when to draw it. He had allowed his daughters to use his library without restraint, and nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library."
-- Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost "My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free."
-- Kirk Douglas (1916- ) "Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), "Books," Society and Solitude "It is vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning, by getting a great library."
-- Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), "Of Books," The Holy and Profane States "The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets the notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his book-shelves."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, ch. 8 "My experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), The Poet at the Breakfast-Table "Children learn to read being in the presence of books."
-- Horace Mann "...of course, those in the ninja world who break the rules and regulations are called trash, but those who don't care about their companions are even worse trash."
-- Obito Uchiha, Naruto ch. 241 "The hen is the wisest animal in Creation, for she cackles only after the egg has been laid."
-- Abraham Lincoln "Kill the spiders to save the butterflies. It seems rational, but then you realize that through such an aspiration, you've become a spider yourself."
-- Trigun "I'm not actually joking. I would love to see one of these studies on 'alternative therapies' to make patients feel better, only done with callgirls instead of shamans or witch doctors or faith healers or whatever else the woo-woo crowd is trying to sell. I'd bet that the results are at least as good, if not better."
-- Michael Wong, re: "Healing Touch 'Therapy' Thrives Despite its Bullfuckery" "It doesn't surprise me that 'healing touch' can make patients feel calmer, but it's not because of 'energy'. It's because patients are lonely, and simply having someone give you a massage or talk to you in a calming, caring demeanour will make you feel much better.

News flash: a hospital is a shitty place to hang out. There's nothing to do, the environment is ugly, the nurses are harried and irritable so you feel guilty asking them for anything, your family only shows up for a few minutes each day if you're lucky, and your friends usually figure it's good enough to send you a 'Get Well' card in the mail. Virtually anything is an improvement on the status quo in hospitals.

They should compare the calming effects of 'healing touch' with the calming effects of bringing in callgirls to give blowjobs and flirt with the patients. I'd bet they'd feel even better after that, but I doubt any hospital would dare try the experiment."
-- Michael Wong, re: "Healing Touch 'Therapy' Thrives Despite its Bullfuckery" "It's long been said that you can't reason someone out of a position that he did not reason himself into in the first place."
-- Michael Wong, re: "The Soul and the Brain" "When people say 'I'm not religous' in our society, they mean 'I'm not devout'. They don't actually mean that they're not religious."
-- Michael Wong, re: "The Soul and the Brain" "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"
-- Unknown "You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."
-- Winnie the Pooh "Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are."
-- Charles Augustin Sanite-Beauve "Anybody remotely interesting is mad, in some way or another."
-- Doctor Who "So give me those two powers of love and longing / That numb gods' thoughts and every human notion, / For I must reach the ends of springing, thronging / Earth, and cross the god-begetting Ocean."
-- Homer, Iliad 14 "So many gods, so many creeds, / So many paths that wind and wind..."
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "The World's Need" "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
-- Michelangelo "Oil an emergency?! It's about time the leaders of this planet of yours realised that to remain dependent upon a mineral slime simply doesn't make sense."
-- The Doctor "Terror Of The Zygons" (1975) "Human's can always be counted on to assert, with vigor, their god-given right to be stupid."
-- Dean Koontz, "Seize the Night" "Between the world of men and transcendent divinity there exists art."
-- Andre Malraux "Kill one man, you're a murderer. Kill a million, a King. Kill them all, a god."
-- Unknown "'Phew!' muttered Bob under his breath, and I wrinkled my nose, too. The smell that assailed us defied description. But then the thought occured to me that some of our own civilized odors are not too delicate either. What about the smells that hover over some of our industrial cities--the smogs, factory stenches, unburned gas exhausts from a million noisy autos, garbage smells drifting out of back alleys? I smiled. Probably an Aleut would wrinkle up his nose at them. I guess it all depends on what you're used to."
-- Ted Bank II, Birthplace of the Winds (New York, 1956), p. 73 "'Has it ever struck you,' he said, 'that civilization's damned dangerous?'"
-- Agatha Christie, "The Shadow on the Glass," The Mysterious Mr. Quin "I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking something up and finding something else on the way."
-- Franklin P. Adams "We are Pilgrims, master; we shall go / Always a little further: it may be / Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow, / Across that angry or that glimmering sea."
-- James Elroy Flecker, The Golden Journey to Samarkand "A cabinful: instruments, computations, maps, / Guesswork and lies and credibility gaps, / Travel-tales, half-dreamed and half-achieved, perhaps."
-- F.C. Terborgh, "Cristóbal Colón" "Was it not for the pleasure which naturally results to a man from being the first discoverer...this service would be insupportable."
-- Captain James Cook, Journal of the voyage of the Endeavour "Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation."
-- Emile Cioran, Anathemas and Admirations "Christianity is the 'true origin' of the holiday where you go sit in a Catholic church and listen to a priest droning at you for two hours. It's not the true origin of the holiday where you decorate trees, eat, drink, and be merry while exchanging gifts. Even most right-wing Christians secretly realize this, and many even complain about the 'commercial Christmas' while continuing to celebrate it. Bunch of whiny hypocritical shits."
-- Michael Wong, re: "The 'Real Origin' of The Holiday"