Meditation 89
Quotations IV
"I hate quotations, tell me what you know." Ralph Waldo Emerson.
But as some people do like quotations and think they can be useful in succinctly communicating an opinion, we will post a selection occasionally. This is the fourth in an ongoing series.
- The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. Joseph Conrad
- It's unequivocally clear that life begins at birth and ends at death. And if most people on this planet understood that, they would lead their lives very differently. We always try to find religious or mysterious forces to fill in for our inadequacies, but heaven and hell are both here on earth every day, and we make our lives around them. J. Craig Venter
- ...it is with God we must be most careful: for He makes such a powerful appeal to what is lowest in human nature -- our feeling of insufficiency, fear of the unknown, personal failings; above all our monstrous egotism which sees in the martyr's crown an athletic prize which is really hard to attain. Lawrence Durrell
- I got no religion in me. I could never see through it. Basically, I'm a facts man; if I can't see through it, I say it's not possible. J.R. Simplot
- If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good. Morris Cohen
- What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer. Bertrand Russell
- Of the five most important things in life, health is first, education or knowledge is second, and wealth is third. I forget the other two. Chuck Berry
- It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty. Ilka Chase
- All progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw.
- If the Bible and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree? Robert G. Ingersoll
- History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion - i.e. none to speak of.
Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)
- If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm. Marcus Aurelius
- Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. Chapman Cohen
- After coming in contact with a religious man, I always feel that I must wash my hands. Nietzsche
- The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete skeptics in religion. John Stuart Mill
- If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking...the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.
Ayn Rand
- What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary. Stephen W. Hawking
- What the Gospels actually said was: don't kill anyone until you are absolutely sure they aren't well connected. Kurt Vonnegurt
- Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. Gary Zukav
- The United States is not a Christian nation. It is a great nation with Christians, among others, in it. But our greatness is based on the fact that there is no official religion. Senator Lowell Weicker