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Meditation 899
Quotations LI

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.  Marlene Dietrich

This is an occasional selection of quotations mostly, but not entirely, relevant to agnosticism, rationalism, and free thought. This is the fifty-first in an apparently unending series. Quotations are indexed by author and by opening words to assist anyone trying to locate a specific one. Suggestions for previously unused quotations are always welcome.

1. Faith actually moves no mountains, but instead raises them up where there were none before. Friedrich Nietzsche
   
   
2. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car. Laurence J. Peter
   
   
3. The Bible as we have it contains elements that are scientifically incorrect or even morally repugnant. No amount of 'explaining away' can convince us that such passages are the product of Divine Wisdom. Bernard J. Bamberger
   
   
4. The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. Pierre Elliott Trudeau
   
   
5. I am skeptical that the universe has any purpose; it seems to me it just is. D.G. Jones
   
   
6. We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. Marcel Proust
   
   
7. When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not do so, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. Benjamin Franklin
   
   
8. ‎It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will  follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. Robert Heinlein
   
   
9. It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed: The time may come when men control the destinies of stars. Arthur C. Clarke
   
   
10. To this pass Christianity has come
    There is no God, and Jesus is his son.
    Irving Layton
    
    
11. Knowing things that are not so is the worst kind of ignorance. Robert C. (Bob) Edwards
    
    
12. I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying. Woody Allen
    
    
13. Every man's religion is his own, and nobody else's business. Thomas C. Haliburton
    
    
14. If two wrongs don't make a right, try three. Laurence J. Peter
    
    
15. Where knowledge is denied, faith comes in. Frederick P. Grove
    
    
16. Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated. George Santayana
    
    
17. Dear you must know it is nothing to me -
    Faith is outmoded;
    All those illusions I once held so fine
    Have long been exploded.
    Winnifred A. Hillier
    
    
18. As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. Matt Cartmill
    
    
19. In my youth,geology was nervously striving to accommodate itself to Genesis. Now it is Genesis that is striving to accommodate itself to geology. Goldwin Smith
    
    
20. No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means. George Bernard Shaw