Site Search via Google

Meditation 401
Quotations XXXIV

"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 publish a selection occasionally, mostly but not entirely relevant. This is the thirty-fourth in an ongoing series. Quotations are now indexed to assist anyone trying to locate a specific one.

1. It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath. Aeschylus
   
   
2. God is dead, but forty thousand social workers have risen to take his place. J. D. M^cCaughey
   
   
3. If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our beliefs? Carl Sagan
   
   
4. There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be an answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. Gertrude Stein
   
   
5. The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your f**king mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions Frank Zappa
   
   
6. What is there to do in life but find what you're good for and do it the best you can? Anthony Boucher (Q.U.R.)
   
   
7. Man was predestined to have free will. Hal Lee Luyah
   
   
8. Pleasure is by no means an infallible guide, but it is the least fallible. W. H. Auden
   
   
9. The point which I would first understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved by the gods. Socrates
   
   
10. If an entirely new scientific theory with more explanatory power is formulated, then Neo-Darwinism will have to be swept aside just as Lamarckism was. Creationism and Intelligent Design don't qualify as competing scientific theories because they're not scientific. They don't offer natural explanations for biological phenomena, but rather supernatural explanations which cannot be tested scientifically. Neo-Darwinism offers a natural explanation to account for the facts of evolution, and rejects supernatural explanations.
    Charles Sullivan and Cameron Mcpherson Smith
    
    
11. The biggest conspiracy has always been the fact that there is no conspiracy. Nobody's out to get you. Nobody cares whether you live or die. There, you feel better now? Dennis Miller
    
    
12. God's noblest work? Man. Who found it out? Man. Mark Twain
    
    
13. I am a fortunate man. Whenever I make a mistake, other people are sure to notice it.Confucius
    
    
14. Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever. Sam Harris
    
    
15. It is a bad plan that cannot be changed. Publilius Syrus
    
    
16. Of all the sexual aberrations, the most peculiar is chastity. Remy de Gourmont
    
    
17. The Vatican is against surrogate mothers. Good thing they did not have that rule when Jesus was born. Elayne Boosler
    
    
18. Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. Socrates
    
    
19. Do television evangelists do more than lay people? Stanley Ralph Ross
    
    
20. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions. Aristotle