Never argue with an idiot. The best outcome you can hope for is that you won an argument with an idiot.
Anonymous
Some people are like Slinkies. Not really good for anything but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
Anonymous
The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents
Edward Abbey
The
correct scientific response to something that is not understood must
always be to look harder for the explanation, not give up and assume a
supernatural cause
David Attenborough
Whoever is still
seeking for miracles so that he may believe is himself a wonder, who
does not believe while the world around him does
Saint Augustine
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
There's a sucker born every minute
Joseph Bessimer (not Phineas T Barnum)
Heathen, n: A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.
Ambrose Bierce
Truth exists. Only lies are invented.
Georges Braque
This is the lesson of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.
Jacob Bronowski
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
Lenny Bruce
All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself
Sir Richard Francis Burton
The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Samuel Butler
There are causes worth dying for but none worth killing for
Albert Camus
Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Thomas Carlyle
The better a man knows the truth, the less he is likely to condemn.
Sebastian Castellio
I
have carefully examined what a heretic means, and I cannot make it mean
more than this: a heretic is a man with whom you disagree.
Sebastian Castellio
God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion.
Superintendent Chalmers (The Simpsons)
Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
G. K. Chesterton
The job of the evangelist is never easy.
Ben Chifley (Prime Minister of Australia, 1945-49)
Never
give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large
or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.
Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might
of the enemy.
Sir Winston Churchill
When you have no basis of argument, abuse the plaintiff
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)
For,
to speak truly, that superstition has extended itself through all
nations, and has oppreseed the intellectual energies of all men, and
has betrayed them into endless imbecilities.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)
I
suffered from chronic hypochondria for years. Eventually I went to a
naturopath and was cured with a course of broad-spectrum placebos
M. Cullen
I
am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in
his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed
before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.
Marie Curie
We
must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it
would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And
this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the
point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for
itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance
that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for
humanity.
Marie Curie
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.
No, not Thomas Jefferson - it was John Philpot Curran
The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition
Quintus Curtius Rufus
This
is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for
complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the
philosophy is kindness.
Dalai Lama
Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
Richard Dawkins
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
Richard Dawkins
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away
Philip K Dick
"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see -
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
Emily Dickinson
Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.
Emily Dickinson
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Denis Diderot
A
thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What
has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into.
Hence skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied
generally, because it is the touchstone
Denis Diderot
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
Skepticism is the first step toward truth
Denis Diderot
The
most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a
stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is
as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein
I
cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has
a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would
I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death;
let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I
am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life 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 religions we call false were once true.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes
James Feibleman
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France
So you're offended. So fucking what?
Stephen Fry (talking about religious objections to free speech)
In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another.
J. William Fullbright
I
do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei
I
think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not
with the Scriptures but with experiments and demonstrations.
Galileo Galilei
No
theory is too false, no fable so absurd, no superstition too degrading
for acceptance when it has become imbedded in common belief. Men will
submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate their
children, all at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept.
Henry George (1839 - 1897)
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Doubt grows with knowledge.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In
science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would
be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples
might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal
time in physics classrooms.
Stephen Jay Gould
In dark
ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a
blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a
man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use
blind, old men as guides.
Heinrich Heine
Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance
Hippocrates
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
Christopher Hitchens
That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.
P. C. Hodgell
The
opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the
gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not
Eric Hoffer
You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.
Abbie Hoffman
The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
For nothing burns with such amazing speed, As the dry sticks of a religious creed
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr
Writing
science fiction for a penny a word is no way to make a living. If you
really want to make a million, the quickest way is to start your own
religion.
L. Ron Hubbard
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
David Hume
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
David Hume
No
testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be
of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the
fact which it endeavours to establish.
David Hume
The
only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of
"Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide.
Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by
a "medium" hired at a guinea a séance.
Aldous Huxley
You
never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries
of magic and religions. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It
is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet,
intelligent enough.
Aldous Huxley
Sit down before fact
as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will
learn nothing.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Thomas Henry Huxley
A man should never put on his best trousers when he goes out to battle for freedom and truth.
Henrik Ibsen
No man with any sense of humour ever founded a religion.
Robert Ingersoll
Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.
Robert Ingersoll
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Thomas Jefferson
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 blind-folded
fear.
Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson
There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people.
Thomas Jefferson
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible positions.
Thomas Jefferson
In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot.
Thomas Jefferson
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
Thomas Jefferson
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
John Maynard Keynes
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
John Maynard Keynes
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
John Maynard Keynes
Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
John Maynard Keynes
Men talk of heaven, - there is no heaven but here;
Men talk of hell, - there is no hell but here;
Men of hereafters talk, and future lives, -
O love, there is no other life - but here.
Omar Khayyám
Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an
inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Martin Luther King Jr
He
who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to
perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is
really cooperating with it.
Martin Luther King Jr
Nobody remembers the words of our enemies, but we do remember the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King Jr
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity
Martin Luther King Jr
The time is always right to do what is right
Martin Luther King Jr
Peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold
Martin Luther King Jr (Nobel Acceptance Speech, 1963)
Scientology
is both immoral and socially obnoxious...It is corrupt, sinister and
dangerous. It is corrupt because it is based on lies and deceit
Justice Latey
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see
John Lennon
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
John Locke
Every
sect as far as reason will help them, gladly use it; when it fails
them, they cry out it is a matter of faith, and beyond reason.
John Locke
It
is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet
hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
Konrad Lorenz
Thinkers aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe
Lord Macaulay
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.
Bob Marley
I count religion as but a childish toy, and hold that there is no sin but ignorance.
Christopher Marlowe
