Literary Classics

Sometimes, too long is too long.

— Joe Crowe

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

— Edmund Burke

Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime. . . . [I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope of dealing with it. . . . [L]et us use the tools that we have. Let us invoke the cooperation we have the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.

— William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985

"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."

— Thomas Paine

"I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

— Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"

"There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way."

— Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry

"...proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect."

— David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"

"Athens built the Acropolis. Corinth was a commercial city, interested in purely materialistic things. Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth."

— Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry

"Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of society...It is justified because...the program can give a sense of shared adventure and achievement to the society at large."

— Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"

The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race. Even if there were no clear scientific or other arguments for proceeding with this task, the whole history of our civilization would still impel men toward the goal. In fact, the assembly of the scientific and military with these human arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama.

— Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"

The idea of man leaving this earth and flying to another celestial body and landing there and stepping out and walking over that body has a fascination and a driving force that can get the country to a level of energy, ambition, and will that I do not see in any other undertaking. I think if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we needed that impetus extremely strongly. I sincerely believe that the space program, with its manned landing on the moon, if wisely executed, will become the spearhead for a broad front of courageous and energetic activities in all the fields of endeavour of the human mind - activities which could not be carried out except in a mental climate of ambition and confidence which such a spearhead can give.

— Dr. Martin Schwarzschild, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"

Human society - man in a group - rises out of its lethargy to new levels of productivity only under the stimulus of deeply inspiring and commonly appreciated goals. A lethargic world serves no cause well; a spirited world working diligently toward earnestly desired goals provides the means and the strength toward which many ends can be satisfied...to unparalleled social accomplishment.

— Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"

The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while. Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications. All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of a good job well done. There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment, the Peace brought by something worth-while.

— Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"

I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon...

— Lyndon B. Johnson

Life's the same, except for the shoes.

— The Cars

Purple hum Assorted cars Laser lights, you bring All to prove You're on the move and vanishing

— The Cars

Could be you're crossing the fine line A silly driver kind of...off the wall You keep it cool when it's t-t-tight ...eyes wide open when you start to fall.

— The Cars

Adapt. Enjoy. Survive.

Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve.

— Anonymous

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

— Isaac Asimov

And the crowd was stilled. One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence, turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said. Wide-eyed, the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no clothes! He is naked!"

— "The Emperor's New Clothes"

"Those who believe in astrology are living in houses with foundations of Silly Putty."

— Dennis Rawlins, astronomer

To date, the firm conclusions of Project Blue Book are: 1. no unidentified flying object reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security; 2. there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as UNIDENTIFIED represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge; and 3. there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as UNIDENTIFIED are extraterrestrial vehicles.

— the summary of Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs from 1950 to 1965, as quoted by James Randi in Flim-Flam!

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.

— Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

— Kahlil Gibran

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

— Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

— Voltaire

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank.

— Woody Allen

I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.

— Norman Cousins

To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.

— C. K. Chesterton

...difference of opinion is advantageious in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor morum over each other. 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.

— Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"

Life is a process, not a principle, a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.

— Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank Herbert??)

So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and our doubts serve to reassure us.

— Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurence of the improbable.

— H. L. Mencken

And do you not think that each of you women is an Eve? The judgement of God upon your sex endures today; and with it invariably endures your position of criminal at the bar of justice.

— Tertullian, second-century Christian writer, misogynist

I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents become better people as a result of practicing it.

— Joe Mullally, computer salesman

Imitation is the sincerest form of plagarism.

"Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry"

— An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the PDP-11

How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored power tools.

How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.

How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb? It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

— Thomas Jefferson

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.

— Thomas Paine

God requireth not a uniformity of religion.

— Roger Williams

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.

— Thomas Jefferson

Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions.

— Thomas Jefferson

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

— Thomas Jefferson

The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.

— John Adams

The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.

— Abraham Lincoln

As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity.

— Benjamin Franklin

I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.

— Oliver North

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

— from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association September 12, 1960.

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization 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 the apologist for the divine right of kings.

— H. L. Mencken

The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....

— H. L. Mencken, 1930

The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way. Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality, and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation, and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing beyond the grave. Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....

— H. L. Mencken

There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly probable.

— H. L. Mencken, 1930

The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.

— Clarence Darrow

We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.

— attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga

...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth.

— George Jacob Holyoake

"If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee."

— broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center, Houston July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.

The meek are contesting the will.

I'm sick of being trodden on! The Elder Gods say they can make me a man! All it costs is my soul! I'll do it, cuz NOW I'M MAD!!!

— Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee

On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins. From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader. "...stupid creatures unworthy of the name `sophonts.' Foolish, pre-sentient upspring of errant masters. We slip away from all your armed might, laughing at your clumsiness! We slip away as we always will, you pathetic creatures. And now that we have a real head start, you'll never catch us! What better proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us! What better proof..." The taunt went on. Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring the artistry of it. These men are better than I'd thought. Their insults are wordy and overblown, but they have talent. They deserve honorable, slow deaths.

— David Brin, Startide Rising

"I'm a mean green mother from outer space"

— Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors

Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer. It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide people to follow His precepts -- there is just too much misery and cruelty for that. On the other hand, I respect and envy the people who get inspiration from their religions.

— Benjamin Spock

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.

— Andy Finkel, computer guy

Being schizophrenic is better than living alone.

NOWPRINT. NOWPRINT. Clemclone, back to the shadows again.

— The Firesign Theater

Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth...But in today's technical vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different.

— The Firesign Theater

...this is an awesome sight. The entire rebel resistance buried under six million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."

— The Firesign Theater

We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.

— Ann Marion

I know engineers. They love to change things.

— Dr. McCoy

On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective software tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the University.

— John Lions (U. of Toronto (?))

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

— Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack

"You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United States? Because your hackers have so much mobility into the establishment. Here, there is no such mobility. If you have the slightest bit of intellectual integrity you cannot support the government.... That's why the best computer minds belong to the opposition."

— an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity

"Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was eating paper and a policeman was at the door. Now all you have to do is bend a disk."

— an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity, commenting on the benefits of using computers in sup

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

— Mark Twain

The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.

— Ed Bluestone

He's dead, Jim.

New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.

— David Letterman

You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.

— Al Capone

The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to levitation. Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the character does not have fire resistance.

— README file from the NetHack game

Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.

— Frank Zappa

I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not. But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.

— Monty Python

"There is no statute of limitations on stupidity."

— Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.

There is a time in the tides of men, Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success. On the other hand, don't count on it.

— T. K. Lawson

To follow foolish precedents, and wink With both our eyes, is easier than to think.

— William Cowper

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)

One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to merit a wise man's reflection.

— Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University, commenting on psi research

Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.

— John Keats

Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.

"Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly. In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket, achieving an altitude of 41 feet. In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth. In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon in Apollo 11."

— Michael Collins Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space Museum

Most people exhibit what political scientists call "the conservatism of the peasantry." Don't lose what you've got. Don't change. Don't take a chance, because you might end up starving to death. Play it safe. Buy just as much as you need. Don't waste time. When we think about risk, human beings and corporations realize in their heads that risks are necessary to grow, to survive. But when it comes down to keeping good people when the crunch comes, or investing money in something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play the game as it must be played.

— David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times, January 18, 1988

"We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting" --Stanley Sutton

Weekends were made for programming.

— Karl Lehenbauer

"Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards."

— H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Sc

...we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent observations and inferences by the thousands. The earth is billions of years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary descent. Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither flat nor at the center of the universe? Science *has* taught us some things with confidence! Evolution on an ancient earth is as well established as our planet's shape and position. Our continuing struggle to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" -- into doubt.

— Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol XII No. 2

This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines, no wires, no controls.

— Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"

Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit...

— Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease

Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other. There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise. Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only....It is quite conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected. But it is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it. Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble. One cannot logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.

— D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949

Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity) not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements of individual human brains.

— Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No.

... Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of the person making the claim, not the critic. It is not the responsibility of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals or colored lights never healed anyone. The skeptic's role is to point out claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidcence and to provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with the accepted body of scientific evidence. ...

— Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215

"Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist."

— Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but they prevailed with irrefutable data. More often, egregious findings that contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts. I have argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic conciousness," and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of neuroscience. Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves offer more plausible alternatives.

— Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness: Implications for Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No.

Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.

— Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, "The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution"

Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around the sun. At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact. That all present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology. Biologists differ only with respect to theories about how the process operates.

— Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131

...It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.

— Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131

... The book is worth attention for only two reasons: (1) it attacks attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple jeering.

— Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201

Now I lay me down to sleep I hear the sirens in the street All my dreams are made of chrome I have no way to get back home

— Tom Waits

I am here by the will of the people and I won't leave until I get my raincoat back.

— a slogan of the anarchists in Richard Kadrey's "Metrophage"

How many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb ? Seven: One to install the new bulb, and six to determine what to do with the old one for the next 10,000 years.

Mike's Law: For a lumber company employing two men and a cut-off saw, the marginal product of labor for any number of additional workers equals zero until the acquisition of another cut-off saw. Let's not even consider a chainsaw.

— Mike Dennison [You could always schedule the saw, though - ed.]

As long as we're going to reinvent the wheel again, we might as well try making it round this time.

— Mike Dennison

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is now in the American experience... We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications... We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address in 1961

This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered french toast in the renaissance.

— Steven Wright, comedian

Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television.

— David Letterman

A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it's designed to be minimal. The smallness of it is what's attractive. It's weird, 'cause it's so intellectually lame. It's hard to see me doing that for the rest of my life. But at the same time, it's what I do best.

— Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David Letterman"

e-credibility: the non-guaranteeable likelihood that the electronic data you're seeing is genuine rather than somebody's made-up crap.

— Karl Lehenbauer

Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.

— Oscar Wilde

My mother is a fish.

— William Faulkner

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

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 persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For 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 powers 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

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.

— from "Our Sunday Visitor", an American-Catholic newspaper, 1949

Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind...

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as plentiful as blackberries...

— Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author

It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

— W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876

Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...

— Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876

Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists) whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about his ignorance. And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon by your own bluster.

— Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

— Voltaire

What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature.

— Voltaire

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

— Voltaire

I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us -- a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole normal evolution of society.

— Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896

The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be.... The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.

— Adam Smith

I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness.

— Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson

However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."

— Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981

"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."

— Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell's suggestion that all good Christians should be aga

...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers. No matter how assured we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions. This is true in religion as it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive. As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be advised to leave them to heaven. They will not, unfortunately, do us the same courtesy. They attack us and each other, and whatever their protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword. My own belief in God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge. My respect for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth. But even well-educated Christians are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record. Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it. Some Christians, alas, resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.

— Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of Conviction", edited by Philip Berman

...it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.

— Sidney Hook

A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

— Winston Churchill

We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism... we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself.

— Jerry Falwell

They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.

— Thomas Jefferson

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.

— George Orwell

As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless conversions -- to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational -- the powers of reason are suprisingly ineffective in changing the believer's mind.

— Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of Conviction", edited by Philip Berman

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

— Fyodor Dostoevski

We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major prohpet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God. But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual resources. If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology, the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.

— Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"

The Messiah will come. There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.

— Rabbi Meir Kahane

The world is no nursery.

— Sigmund Freud

If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and superficial answer is not far to seek.... The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor, it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that, if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival denomination would get an unfair advantage.

— John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher, from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908

Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality. All proffered samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to common tests. It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse. The characteristic of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generall known; authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists, there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics where the method of free inquiry has made its way. The "religious" would be the last to be willing that either the history of the content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device, but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against its being taught in any other spirit.

— John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher, from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908

In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality...Whether this educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non- democratic way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the interests and activites of a society that is committed to the democratic way of life.

— John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher

History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another... Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained.

— Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"

...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our family, the Hominidae.

— Richard Leakey

It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system would see in our species -- which has tended to be cruel, destructive, wasteful, and irrational -- the crown and apex of cosmic evolution. Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us as a transitional species makes more sense -- and gives us more hope.

— Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species", Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1

"Well, you see, it's such a transitional creature. It's a piss-poor reptile and not very much of a bird."

— Melvin Konner, from "The Tangled Wing", quoting a zoologist who has studied the archeopteryz and found it "very much lik

"You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape."

— Ellyn Mustard

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him." -Arthur C. Clarke

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" -Ronald Reagan

"There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know yet." -Ambrose Bierce

"Plan to throw one away. You will anyway."

— Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"

You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape.

— Ellyn Mustard

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him." -Arthur C. Clarke

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" -Ronald Reagan

"There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know yet." -Ambrose Bierce

The Middle East is certainly the nexus of turmoil for a long time to come -- with shifting players, but the same game: upheaval. I think we will be confronting militant Islam -- particularly fallout from the Iranian revolution -- and religion will once more, as it has in our own more distant past -- play a role at least as standard-bearer in death and mayhem.

— Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence, vice director of the DIA, former director

...One thing is that, unlike any other Western democracy that I know of, this country has operated since its beginnings with a basic distrust of government. We are constituted not for efficient operation of government, but for minimizing the possibility of abuse of power. It took the events of the Roosevelt era -- a catastrophic economic collapse and a world war -- to introduce the strong central government that we now know. But in most parts of the country today, the reluctance to have government is still strong. I think, barring a series of catastrophic events, that we can look to at least another decade during which many of the big problems around this country will have to be addressed by institutions other than federal government.

— Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence, vice director of the DIA, former director

"I have just one word for you, my boy...plastics."

— from "The Graduate"

"There is such a fine line between genius and stupidity."

— David St. Hubbins, "Spinal Tap"

"If Diet Coke did not exist it would have been neccessary to invent it."

— Karl Lehenbauer

I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by men who are equally certain that they represent the divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some respects, both. I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.

— Abraham Lincoln

In space, no one can hear you fart.

Brain damage is all in your head.

— Karl Lehenbauer

Wish and hope succeed in discerning signs of paranormality where reason and careful scientific procedure fail.

— James E. Alcock, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12

"It is better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try, but the result's the same."

— Mike Dennison

"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectualy heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?

— Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186

It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and intimidation.

"Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph)."

— 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.

"Your attitude determines your attitude."

— Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus

In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP, psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily use only 10 percent of our brains... This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of "pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes. As a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could deny it? As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous, it leaves much to be desired.

— Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness: Implications for Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No.

Thufir's a Harkonnen now.

"By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun."

— P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's "Computer Language"

"If you want to eat hippopatomus, you've got to pay the freight."

— attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory

Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time alloted it.

Karl's version of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to exceed the time alloted it.

It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried something and failed.

— motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere

"Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined, hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension."

— Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression Revisited", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2

"...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products, if they are built at all, are dogs!"

— David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987

"To take a significant step forward, you must make a series of finite improvements."

— Donald J. Atwood, General Motors

"We will bury you."

— Nikita Kruschev

"Now here's something you're really going to like!"

— Rocket J. Squirrel

"How to make a million dollars: First, get a million dollars."

— Steve Martin

"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."

— B. L. Whorf

The language provides a programmer with a set of conceptual tools; if these are inadequate for the task, they will simply be ignored. For example, seriously restricting the concept of a pointer simply forces the programmer to use a vector plus integer arithmetic to implement structures, pointer, etc. Good design and the absence of errors cannot be guaranteed by mere language features.

— Bjarne Stroustrup, "The C++ Programming Language"

"For the love of phlegm...a stupid wall of death rays. How tacky can ya get?"

— Post Brothers comics

"Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation."

— Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments

"An organization dries up if you don't challenge it with growth."

— Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments

"I've seen it. It's rubbish."

— Marvin the Paranoid Android

Our business is run on trust. We trust you will pay in advance.