Memorable quotes
DISCLAIMER: These quotes appear here NOT because they reflect my own opinion in the subject (as indicated by the subsection headings) but because I found them inspiring, thought provoking, or worthy for the purpose of bringing to light the speaker's slant on current issues. And some were just too funny to ignore...
Table of Contents:
- Personal
- Ethics
- Freethought
- Research
- The Ivory Tower
- The Department of Records
- Higher Education
- Science
- Philosophy
- Futurology
- Faith
- Religion
- Atheism
- Americana
- Palestine
- Antisemitism
- Terrorism
- Fools
- Hogwash
- Jerks
- Postmodern nihilism
- Health/sport
- Other
- Homicide: Life on the Street
Personal
I rather fail with quality than succeed with garbage. [Susan Grushow]
Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. [Nathaniel Hawthorne]
Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. [Chief Seattle]
The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit. [Nelson Henderson]
De leraar die je nodig hebt is de persoon met wie je samenleeft (The teacher you need most is the person you live with.) [Anon]
Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love]
It's your ability to inspire and uplift other people that matters, not your ability to outdo them. [Anon]
My soul would be an outlaw. I can do nothing with it. [Harlan Ellison]
The only way to have a friend is to be one. [Anon]
It is perfectly possible to get what you think you want and be miserable. It's possible too, to never get it but deeply enjoy the process of trying. [Anon]
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. [Mark Twain]
All the deeds of mankind are only dreams at first. And in the end, their deeds dissolve into dreams. [Theodor Herzl]
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. [Anatole France]
Science fiction is continually lumped under the heading of 'escape literature,' .... It is an odd form of escape literature that worried its readers with atom bombs, overpopulation, bacterial warfare, trips to the moon, and other such phenomena decades before the rest of the world had to take up the problems. ... No, no, if science fiction escapes, it is an escape into reality. [Isaac Asimov, "Escape Into Reality"]
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it. [Anon]
I'd like mornings better if they started later. [Garfield]
Culture shock is what happens when a traveller suddenly finds himself in a place where yes means no, where a "fixed price" is negotiable, where to be kept waiting in an outer office is no cause for insult, where laughter may signify anger. It is what happens when the familiar psychological cues that help an individual to function in society are suddenly withdrawn and replaced by new ones that are strange or incomprehensible. ... Take an individual out of his own culture and set him down suddenly in an environment sharply different from his own, with a different set of cues to react to—different conceptions of time, space, work, love, religion, sex, and everything else... the sense of disorientation will be still further intensified. [Alvin Toffler]
Ethics
All that is necessary for the forces of evil to take root in the world is for enough good men to do nothing. [Edmund Burke]
Liberty consists of being able to do anything that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights. [Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen]
Sin only lies in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other “sins” are invented nonsense. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love]
They first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me—and by that time no one was left to speak up. [Attributed to Martin Niemoeller, found on a wall in Dachau death camp]
Always do right—this will gratify some and astonish the rest. [Mark Twain]
Evil is best recognized not by its motives but by its methods. [Eric S Raymond]
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. [Samuel Johnson]
Scientists should not experiment on animals. They should experiment on animal rights-activists who blow people up. [Lilith]
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' [Martin Luther King II]
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. [Joseph Conrad]
Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals. [Abba Eban]
Politics is very much like a septic tank—the really big chunks always rise to the top. [Lilith]
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. [Nick Diamos]
For humans, honesty is a matter of degree. Engineers are always honest in matters of technology and human relationships. That's why it's a good idea to keep engineers away from customers, romantic interests, and other people who can't handle the truth. [Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle]
I believe Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence for fighting for our cause, but by non-participation of anything you believe is evil. [Albert Einstein]
Our task must be to free from ...the illusion that a human's thoughts and feelings [are] separated from the rest...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. [Albert Einstein]
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality [John F Kennedy]
I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. [Mark Twain]
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. [Attributed to George Orwell]
Never frighten a little man. He'll kill you. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love]
Freethought
Following the path of least resistance is what makes men and rivers crooked. [Anon]
Eppur si muove! ("But it does move!") [Galileo Galilei]
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. [Lillian Hellman]
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. [Oscar Wilde]
Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul. [Mark Twain]
Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism. [Carl Sagan]
All great truths begin as blasphemies. [George Bernard Shaw]
I rather be hated for who I am than be loved for who I am not. [Andre Gidé]
He serves the State most who opposes the State most. [Henry David Thoreau]
All change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no troublemakers, no dissenters, we would still be living in caves. [A. J. P. Taylor]
[I have] suspicion against every kind of [social] authority—a skeptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment. [Albert Einstein]
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. [Albert Einstein]
Kings are not born; they are made by universal hallucination. [George Bernard Shaw]
I wonder how far Moses would have gone if had taken a poll in Egypt? [Harry Truman]
If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership, you are practicing followership. [Margaret Thatcher]
A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement. [Abba Eban]
The difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a little longer. [John Brunner, Stand On Zanzibar]
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. [William James]
The Right defines the explicit depiction of sex as evil; the Left defines it as violence against women. The result is the same. [Wendy McElroy]
Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. [Giordano Bruno]
We often hear it said... I'll get used to it. What no one asks is at what cost do we get used to things. [Jose Saramago]
It is proper for you, Kalamas [the people of Kesaputta], to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are bad; these things are blameable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them. [Buddha, Kalama Sutta]
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, Of Miracles, 1748]
Research
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? [Albert Einstein]
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing. [Wernher von Braun]
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind. [Marston Bates]
For an idea that does not first seem insane, there is no hope. [Albert Einstein]
The quest for innovation has to be liberated from the constraining and...
short-sighted separation between basic and applied research. Einstein's own work
... amply demonstrate the mutual interdependence of basic and applied research.
Industry used to know this when it fared economically better. Now, under
economic constraints, it forgets its glorious achievements which mostly followed
from not separating basic from applied research.
[Yehuda Elkana]
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. [Albert Einstein]
I have my results since a long time, I just don’t know yet how I will arrive to them [Gauss, quoted in Friedell, 1974, p. 394]
In the future, we will be able to answer the questions—but will we be bright enough to ask them? [John Brockman, What We Believe In And Cannot Prove, p. xi]
If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative. [Woody Allen]
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. [Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"]
My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful. [Hermann Weyl]
Always listen to experts. They will tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love]
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong. [Arthur C. Clarke]
It is best to learn as we go, not go as we have learned. [Leslie Jeanne Sahler]
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. [Cynthia Heimel]
For every problem there is always a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. [Mark Twain]
The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory. [Anon]
To him who is a discoverer in (theoretical physics), the products of his imagination appear so necessary and natural that he regards them, and would like them regarded by others, not as creations of thought but as given realities. [Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934.]
Most scientific breakthroughs are nothing else than the discovery of the obvious. [Eberhard Zangger]
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination. [Bertrand Russell]
Without abstraction and idealization there is no systematization. [John Searle]
Our job in physics is to see things simply, to understand a great many complicated phenomena, in terms of a few simple principles. [Steven Weinberg]
Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity. [E. C. Zeeman]
Good science creates two challenging puzzles for each puzzle it resolves. [Paul Steinhardt]
Often, the biggest impediment to scientific progress is not what we don't know, but what we know. [Robert Sapolsky]
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. [Albert Einstein]
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. [Albert Einstein]
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]
The great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. [Thomas H. Huxley]
It is commonplace that a problem stated is well on its way to solution, for statement of the nature of a problem signifies that the underlying quality is being transformed into determinate distinctions of terms and relations or has become an object of articulate thought. [John Dewey, On Experience, Nature and Freedom.]
Problems worthy
of attack
prove their worth
by hitting back. [P. Hein]
The most creative science is wrong, but the deception ultimately leads to the benefit of mankind. Think Freud! [Allan Snyder]
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. [Albert Einstein]
There is no national science just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science. [Anton Pavlovich Chekhov]
I should like to ask the same question that Descartes asked. You are proposing to give a precise definition of logical correctness which is to be the same as my vague intuitive feeling for logical correctness. How do you intend to show that they are the same? ... The average mathematician should not forget that intuition is the final authority. [J. Barkley Rosser]
Meaning is what an explanation of meaning explains. [Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar, p. 69. In: R Rhees, translated by A.J.P. Kenny. Blackwell: 1974].
The Ivory Tower
If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z.
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. [Albert Einstein]
I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time. [Herbert Bayard Swope]
There was an old cannibal whose stomach suffered from so many disorders that he could only digest animals that had no spines. Thus, for years, he subsisted only upon university professors. [Louis Phillips]
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. [J. D. Watson, The Double Helix]
I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike—and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two—are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked. [Harold Bloom]
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. [Mark Twain]
Scientists are the easiest to fool. They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors—they terrify me. Scientists are no problem; against them I feel quite confident. [James P. Hogan]
We're all so busy being practical that we don't have time to be intelligent. [Albert E. Cowdrey, The Tribes of Bela]
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. [M. Cartmill]
There once was an old man of Esser
Whose knowledge grew lesser and lesser
It at last grew so small
He knew nothing at all
And now he's a college professor. [Anon]
Publish or Perish
A scientist who can speak without jargon is either an idiot or a genius. [Alun Anderson, New Scientist editor-in-chief.]
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! [Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"]
The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. [Lily Tomlin]
Speak the truth, but leave immediately after. [Slovenian proverb]
The secret of being boring is to say everything. [Voltaire]
When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind. [Marcus Tullius Cicero]
Present to inform, not to impress; if you inform, you will impress. [Fred Brooks]
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. [Mark Twain]
Don't underestimate the importance of fashion in doing science. [Leo Chalupa]
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. [Richard Feynman]
Discoveries made in a field by some one from another discipline will always be upsetting to the majority of those inside. [J. Craig Venter]
Question authority; but raise your hand first. [A. Dershowitz]
If you're too far ahead of the herd (with very few exception) you're not going to get funded by NIH/NSF or published in the premier journals. [Leo Chalupa]
Good books are never finished, just abandoned. [Neil Gershenfeld]
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. [Werner von Braun]
Obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity. [Richard Dawkins]
What is written without effort is read without pleasure. [Samuel Johnson]
Science which seems to confirm human-kind beliefs is always welcome; science that undermines human-kind belief is always unpopular. [David Berreby]
Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we'. [Mark Twain]
On the other hand, it is impossible for a cube to be written as a sum of two cubes or a fourth power to be written as a sum of two fourth powers or, in general, for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain. [Fermat, "Fermat's Last Theorem", by Harold Edward]
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art. [Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle]
If I had actually been aware of all the efforts made in the past centuries, I would never have written a line, but would have done something else. [Goethe]
The Department of Records
What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary. [Richard Harkness, The New York Times, 1960]
Committees are indispensable if you want to do nothing. [John Kenneth Galbreith]
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. [B. Cocks]
And at a time when every major company is trying to flatten the hierarchy, the European Union takes 12 bureaucracies and puts another one on top. [Alvin Toffler]
This is your receipt for your husband...and this is my receipt for your receipt. ["Brazil", told by government agents to a woman while arresting her husband.]
Listen, this ... system .. could be on fire and I couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap without filling out a 27b/6! ["Brazil"]
If the person who first picked up the phone cannot answer your question, it's a bureaucracy. [Anon]
-
Jim Hacker: Who else is in this department?
-
Sir Humphrey: Well briefly, Sir, I am the Permanent Under Secretary of State, known as the Permanent Secretary. Woolley here is your Principal Private Secretary, I too have a Principal Private Secretary and he is the Principal Private Secretary to the Permanent Secretary. Directly responsible to me are 10 Deputy Secretaries, 87 Under Secretaries and 219 Assistant Secretaries. Directly responsible to the Principal Private Secretary are plain Private Secretaries, and the Prime Minister will be appointing 2 Parliamentary Under Secretaries and you will be appointing your own Parliamentary Private Secretary.
-
Jim Hacker: Do they all type? ["Yes, Minister!"]
If you want to make enemies, try to change something. [Woodrow Wilson]
Mistakes? We don't make mistakes! ["Brazil", told by government agents after arresting the wrong man.]
Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail. [Read Spitzer]
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. [Robert Heinlein]
As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way. Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs. Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.[William L. McKnight]
Higher Education
The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit. [Nelson Henderson]
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. [Plutarch]
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. [W. A. Ward]
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe [H.G. Wells]
When I think of the most able students I have encountered in my teaching I mean those who have distinguished themselves not only by skill but by independence of thought. [Albert Einstein]
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. [Mark Twain]
It is important that [university] students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is know, but to question it. [Jacob Bronowski]
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love]
Don't let school get in the way of your education. [Mark Twain]
So, if I look into my foggy crystal ball at the future of computing science education, I overwhelmingly see the depressing picture of "Business as usual". The universities will continue to lack the courage to teach hard science, they will continue to misguide the students, and each next stage of infantilization of the curriculum will be hailed as educational progress. [Edsger W Dijkstra]
What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence—moral, cultural, social or intellectual. ... The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers—or should I say nurses?—will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. [C.S. Lewis]
You have to regard everything I say with suspicion. I may be trying to bullshit you, or I may just be bullshitting you inadvertently. [J. Wainwright, Mathematics 140b]
Training is everything. Cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college degree. [Mark Twain]
Science
And though it is true that science can be bent to evil ends, it is more often the case that injustice creeps in through the cracks of our ignorance than anything else. [Armand Leroi]
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]
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. [Alfred North Whitehead]
All things are numbers. [Pythagoras]
Reporter: What would you do if the measurements of bending starlight at the 1919 eclipse contradicted his general theory of relativity?
Einstein: Then I would feel sorry for the good Lord. The theory is correct.
It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment. [Paul Dirac]
The more precisely the POSITION is determined, the less precisely the MOMENTUM is known. [Werner Heisenberg]
Art gives you a destination. Science builds the bus that takes you there. [Henry Warwick]
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. [Carl Sagan]
The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. [J. B. S. Haldane]
A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering. [Freeman Dyson]
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.[Albert Einstein]
Technology
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. [Arthur C. Clarke]
Any technology that does not appear magical is insufficiently advanced. [Gregory Benford]
The principal applications of any sufficiently new and innovative technology always have been and will continue to be applications created by this technology. [Herbert Kroemer]
Digital technology is inundating modern life at the alarming speed of a Bengali typhoon. [Wired]
I don't even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages. [Umberto Eco, quoted in the New Yorker]
The Internet
The inflation of available information has devaluated word and image to mere content. The resulting perception fatigue is increasingly met with the overused rhetorical tool of polarizing opinion. It’s based on an old trick used by street vendors. In the intellectual food court of mass media, opinion appeals to reflexes just as the fried fat and sugar smells of snackfood outlets activate age-old instincts of hunting and gathering. [Andrian Kreye]
Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. [Mitchell Kapor]
[Science] is historically constructed, ... subjected to historically defined standards of judgement. It can be questioned, disputed, affirmed, developed, formalized, contemplated, even taught, and it can vary dramatically from one people to the next. It is, in short, a cultural system... [R.N. Adams]
Junk Science and the "supernatural"
The first job of any scientific fraud is to persuade the public that science is itself unscientific. [John Rennie]
The fury with which untenable beliefs are defended is inversely proportional to their defensibility. [Richard Dawkins]
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. [Carl Sagan]
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true. [Carl Sagan]
There aren't any ghosts except the ones we buy with our guilty desires [Harlan Ellison, Paulie Charmed The Sleeping Woman]
The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusion. [Maurice Chapelain]
The devil's dictionary:
Astrology: The ancient art of taking money off people for old rope. [Pythonline]
Homeopathy: The less you use it, the better it works. [D. Deutsch]
Mystic: A man or woman who wants to understand the mysteries of the universe but is too lazy or stupid to study physics. [Anon]
Psychic: An individual having a supernatural talent for extracting money from morons. [Anon]
Any sufficiently advanced system of magic would be indistinguishable from a technology. [Eric S. Raymond]
Philosophy
Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius. [Isaac D'Israeli]
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. [Bertrand Russell]
We can in fact only define a weed, mutatis mutandis, in terms of the well-known definition of dirt—as matter out of place. What we call a weed is in fact merely a plant growing where we do not want it. [E.J. Salisbury, The Living Garden, 1935]
Futurology
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. [Alvin Tofler]
In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizen’s of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations, will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon. [Alvin Toffler]
Take an individual out of his own culture and set him down suddenly in an environment sharply different from his own, with a different set of cues to react to—different conceptions of time, space, work, love, religion, sex, and everything else--then cut him off from any hope of retreat to a more familiar social landscape, and the dislocation he suffers is doubly sever. Moreover, if this new culture is itself in constant turmoil, and if—worse yet—its values are incessantly changing, the sense of disorientation will be still further intensified. ... The victim may become a hazard to himself and others. Now imagine not merely an individual but an entire society, an entire generation—including its weakest ... members—suddenly transported into this new world. The result is mass disorientation, future shock on a grand scale. This is the prospect that man now faces. [Alvin Toffler]
In our tenure on this planet we have accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, hereditary propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders and hostility to outsiders.... But we have also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and our children's children, a desire to learn from history, and a great soaring passionate intelligence... Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our vision and understanding and prospects are bound exclusively to the Earth—or, worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits us. [Carl Sagan]
The further backward you look, the further forward you can see [Winston Churchill]
Faith
Faith: I had a girlfriend called faith; she cheated on me with a girl called Chastity. [Red Planet]
There will always be more people around whose prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not. [Nicholas Humphrey]
Law of Divine Invulnerability: When things go right, God will be thanked. When things go wrong, he will be thanked that they are not worse. [Richard Dawkins]
If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate. [Carl Sagan]
Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe in. [Athenæus]
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. [Delos McKown]
Everyone, whether cardinal or scientist, who believes that his own truth is complete and final must become a dogmatist...The more sincere his faith, the more he is bound to persecute, to save others from falling into error. [Joyce Cary]
Religion
The most preposterous notion that H. Sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of All the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, ... pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love]
The fact that a believer may be happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunk is happier than a sober man. [George Bernard Shaw]
Churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. ... the man who is convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes with the course of events. [Albert Einstein, The New York Times, Nov. 9, 1930.]
...But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit! [George Carline, 40 Years Of Comedy]
Ye cannot serve God and mammon. [Mathew 6:24]
It's easy to see why ideas related to the ‘sacred' and the ‘blasphemous' are so attractive and so fiercely defended. With them one can tell people what to think and how to live with the greatest authority while simultaneously establishing immunity from criticism. [Peter Fosl]
Religion is sensitive ground, as well it might be. Here we walk on eggshells. Because religion is itself an eggshell. [Martin Amis]
With the name of God they imagine that they can establish fraternity among men, and on the contrary, they create pride, contempt; they sow discord, hatred, war; they establish slavery. [Mikhail Bakunin, "Church and State", 1872, p. 53]
The devil's dictionary:
Religion:... (2) A cult which has achieved sufficient longevity, membership, and economic clout to merit societal acceptance. [The Devil's Dictionary]
If God thought that nudity was OK we would have been born naked. [Anon]
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. [Mathew 6:24]
People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. [Dave Barry]
Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence [Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam]
The old bitch got it anyway [Christopher Hitchens, about Mother Theresa receiving Sainthood]
Judaism
There is only one god—and we do not believe in him! [Sigmund Freud]
The only thing I have in common with Judaism is we both don't like to work on Saturdays. ["Homicide", Munch]
I'm Jewish, but I'm not that religious. I go to temple twice a year. Christmas and Easter. [Jeffrey Ross]
כל המשים על לבו שיעסוק בתורה ולא יעשה מלאכה ויתפרנס מן הצדקה—הרי זה חילל את ה' ובזה את התורה וכבה מאור הדת וגרם רעה לעצמו ונטל חייו מן העולם הבא [רמב"ם, הלכות תלמוד תורה, פרק ג'.]
Deities
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 blindfolded fear. [Thomas Jefferson]
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science. [Chapman Cohen]
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen. [Michel de Montaigne]
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love]
Man created God in his own image. [Anon]
- "Would you tax God?" asks a defender of church tax exemption.
- "Well, if there were a God he should be able to pay his own way and support his own business. If not, then he should do like other business men and close up shop." [E. Haldeman-Julius]
Christians worship God, who is to be praised and glorified—not tipped with less than the price of a pint. [Reverend Mark Sowerby demanding nothing less than notes for his collection plate, The Daily Telegraph, 26-Dec-04
Atheism
If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion. [Edmond Jules de Goncourt]
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. [Isaac Asimov]
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own—a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. [Albert Einstein]
I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. [Albert Einstein, 1954]
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. [Albert Einstein]
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. [John Buchan]
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. [Stephen Roberts]
|
God full of mercy |
אל מלא רחמים |
|
Where was he?! I don't know!! Why? I don't know! [Rabbi Isaac Sher, when questioned where was Jehovah during the holocaust] |
איפה הוא היה?! הוא עשה את
זה!! למה? אני לא יודע!" |
Americana
It's like paradise, with a lobotomy. [Neil Simon]
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization. [George Clemenceau]
America is a mistake. A Giant mistake. [Sigmund Freud]
— "Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of western
civilization?"
— "That it would be a good idea!" [Mahatma Gandhi]
Opra Winfrey fans are inferior to vegetables; even sea-weed have enough sense to avoid oil spills. [Lilith]
George Junior
Americans [and British] have different ways of saying things. They say "elevator", we say "lift" ... they say "President", we say "stupid psychopathic git". [Alexis Sayle]
If I owned Texas and Hell, I'd rent out Texas and live in Hell. [Philip H Sheridan]
Christian: One who generously seeks to transfer his expertise in morality into provisions in the penal code. [The Devil's Dictionary]
Palestine
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. [John F. Kennedy]
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. [Abba Eban, Speech in London, 1970]
When I was first here, we had the advantages of the underdog. Now we have the disadvantages of the overdog. [Abba Eban]
Bridging political gulfs—rather than widening them further apart—between nations and individuals thus becomes an educational duty as well as a functional necessity, requiring exchange and dialogue rather than confrontation and antagonism. Our disaffection with, and condemnation of acts of academic boycotts and discrimination against scholars and institutions, is predicated on the principles of academic freedom, human rights, and equality between nations and among individuals. ... If we are to look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we've had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favour of seeing us as equals [...] If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach. [Sari Nusseibeh, president, al-Quds University, ]
Antisemitism
If you take into account the theory that Jews are responsible for everything nasty in the history of the world, and also the recent EU survey that found 60% of Europeans believe Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the world today (hmm, I must have missed all those rabbis telling their flocks to go out with bombs strapped to their bodies and blow up the nearest mosque), it's a short jump to reckoning that it was obviously a bloody good thing that the Nazis got rid of six million of the buggers. Perhaps this is why sales of Mein Kampf are so buoyant, from the Middle Eastern bazaars unto the Edgware Road, and why The Protocols of The Elders of Zion could be found for sale at the recent Anti-racism Congress in Durban. [Julie Burchill]
Anti-Zionists are prepared to treat Jews equally and fight anti-semitic prejudice only if Jews give up their distinctiveness as a nation: Jews as a nation deserve no sympathy and no rights, Jews as individuals are worthy of both. ... Denouncing Israel becomes a passport to full integration. Noam Chomsky and his imitators are the new heroes, their Jewish pride and identity expressed solely through their shame for Israel's existence. [Emanuele Ottolenghi]
Terrorism
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love]
Non-violence is the policy of the vegetable kingdom. [H. G. Wells]
Anyone who lost their "innocence" on September 11 was too naïve by far, or too stupid to begin with. [Christopher Hitchens]
ארורים הרוצחים וארורים שולחיהם
[יואל בן נון]
The common dogma [of fundamentalists] is fear of modern knowledge, inability to cope with the fast change in a scientific-technological society, and the real breakdown in apparent moral order in recent years.... That is why hate is the major fuel, fear is the cement of the movement, and superstitious ignorance is the best defence against the dangerous new knowledge. ... When you bring up arguments that cast serious doubts on their cherished beliefs you are not simply making a rhetorical point, you are threatening their whole Universe and their immortality. That provokes anger and quite frequently violence. [G Gaia]
Most self-described pacifists are not pacific; they simply assume false colours. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love]
Make love, not peace [Lilith]
Fools
It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt. [Mark Twain]
All you need in life is ignorance and confidence. Than success is sure. [Mark Twain]
Never argue with an idiot. They will only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. [Dilbert]
Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. [Anon]
We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid. [Benjamin Franklin]
Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it. [Mark Twain]
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. [Edith Sitwell]
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege. [Anon]
He who writes for fools is sure of a large audience. [A. Schopenhauer]
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. [Elbert Hubbard]
Nothing is as frightening as ignorance in action. [Goethe]
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence — and then success is sure. [Mark Twain]
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. [Martin Luther King, Jr.]
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. [Voltaire]
It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out. [Alexander Pope]
Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. [Anon]
His ignorance is encyclopaedic. [Abba Eban]
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people [Netradio.com]
Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments where he was merely stupid. [Heinrich Heine]
I have never found ... that criticism is ever inhabited by ignorance. [Harold Macmillan]
If I had to choose between him and a cockroach as a companion, the cockroach would have had it by a short head. [P. G. Wodehouse]
There is no way to find out why the snorer can't hear himself snore. [Mark Twain]
Hogwash: a shrine to human stupidity
Before you read these quotes, note the subtitle of this section and read the disclaimer at the top of this page
|
"We really have dinosaurs today, without any question. You just need the right weather conditions, as I see it, to get huge creatures. And in the ocean, of course, we have huge creatures....this is where the plesiosauruses seem to be today, and perhaps also this fire breathing dragon is still down there—very rare, but occasionally there." [Rev. Walter Lang, Founder, Bible-Science Association] And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. [ Senator Ted Stevens] The stupid pursuit of elegance is a principal cause of the mathematician's failure to understand their own operations. [Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar, p. 462] "Mathematicians nowadays make so much fuss about the proof of the consistency of axioms. I have a feeling that if there were such a contradiction in the axioms of a system it wouldn't be such a great misfortune. Nothing easier than to remove it." [Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar, p. 303] "The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability—it is, finally, the concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of something—of a center starting from which an observer could master the field—but the very concept of the game." [Jacques Derrida] It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand. [Galileo Galilei] Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them (Quran 4:34) "I feel that 'man-hating' is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." [Robin Morgan] "Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies." [Andrea Dworkin] [Rape] "is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear." [Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will p. 6] "The argument that there exists a difference between the sexes is a typical male view." [Folkvett] The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell. [Saint Augustine] I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast [Ronald Reagan] Dan Quayle (vice president of the United States 1989-93)
Now your consciousness exists as a series of numbers in a computer; that is all a computer program is, after all. Let us go a little further... suppose you have a marvelous new sensor that can read the positions of every raindrop in a storm. Gather these raindrop positions as a list of numbers and pretend that those numbers are a computer program. Now, start searching through all the possible computers that could exist... until you find one that treats the raindrop patterns as a program exactly equivalent to your brain. Yes, it can be done..." [Since the list is R.E. and the brain's description is finite.] Is the rainstorm, then, conscious? Is it conscious by being specifically you, because it implements you? [Jaron Lenier] I don’t believe you have to ask a black, lesbian woman sitting in a wheelchair if she gets discriminated against. [Annemarie Grewel, Dutch Labour politician] |
Postmodern nihilism
"Hate crime": If you want to hurt another human being, you'd better make damn sure they're the same color as you are! [Eric Cartman, Southpark]
"Judge not, that ye be not judge"... is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself. There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture [Ayn Rand]
The ideals men die for often become the prejudices their descendants kill for. [Paul Eldridge]
When they come downstairs from their ivory towers, idealists are apt to go straight into the gutter. [Logan P. Smith]
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy [Franz Kafka]
If few can stand a long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace. [Oswald Spengler]
I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, I was deprived. Then they told me deprived was a bad image, I was under-privileged. Then they told me under-privileged was overused, I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime, but I sure have a great vocabulary. [Jules Feiffer]
Affirmative action is well-intentioned racism. [Lilith]
The right treats minorities as inferior; the left reveres them. The result is symmetrical. [Lilith]
Let me repeat what I often say to students who come braying to me with postmodernist ideas: Suppose that I return a term paper to you with a failing grade and a note that reads, “I should give you a much better grade, but I hate your guts, so there.” You will scream bloody murder, go to the dean, possibly sue me. What is the assumption behind your outrage? Obviously, you expect me to grade your paper fairly—that is, objectively—regardless of my feelings about you. But why do you demand this of me as a teacher while denying my ability to do it as a researcher? [Peter L. Berger]
Catharine MacKinnon ("All sex is rape.") is a strident harpy who has loudly asserted as fact any number of fool-headed opinions. [Barbara Mikkelson]
|
Whoever is kind to the cruel is being cruel to the
kind. |
כל שהוא רחמן על אכזרים לסוף נעשה אכזר על רחמנים |
Health/Sport
Every time I feel the urge to exercise, I lie down until it goes away. [Mark Twain]
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended. [G. B. Shaw]
Basketball: Proof that childhood glandular disorders need not impair adult earnings potential. [Anon]
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. [Some dead guy]
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. [Redd Foxx]
Other
Cheap, fast, good: Pick any two. [Anon]
We ought never to do wrong when people are looking. [Mark Twain]
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better, while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more. [Woody Allen]
A good analogy is like a diagonal frog. [Kai Krause]
Traditional values: Xenophobia; anti-intellectualism; sexism; racism; homophobia; sexual repression; fear and loathing of the human body; the morbid prurience of the "moral". [The Devil's Dictionary]
I tried to join Paranoids Anonymous but nobody would tell me where were they meeting. [T. Wilson]
By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. [Robert Lee Frost]
Hofstadter's Law: it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. [D. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach]
Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. [Mark Twain]
In case you're worried about what's going to become of the younger generation, it's going to grow up and start worrying about the younger generation. -- Roger Allen
There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven. [Dave Barry]
Really Bad Acronyms, or RBAs, are spawned by NPLs (Nerdy Project Leaders) when naming new systems. I cannot comprehend why projects like FTMPS and NUMAchine were not given more charming monikers such as Infectoid or Puggsley or Vomitsauce. These names would stick in people's minds as FTMPS can never dream. [Jonathan Shewchuk, 1997]
Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love]
I'm starting to get commercial breaks in my dreams. [T. Wilson]
Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's' beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth. [Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love.]
Common sense is the sum total of all prejudice deposited in the human mind prior to the age of 18. [Albert Einstein]
It is astounding to realize that perhaps half of all human knowledge has been discovered or created in the past century. But then again, so has half the bullshit. [D. H. Futterman]
I consider myself an average man, except for the fact that I consider myself an average man. [Michel de Montaigne]
Those are my principles. If you don't like them....I have others. [Groucho Marx]
Homicide: Life On The Streets
For fans of said TV drama series 'Homicide: Life On The Streets.'
All we need is a couple of facts. We already know the truth. [Giardello]
Tim: Not taking your medicine, are you? (Frank stares) I'm a detective
Frank! I'm a keen observer of the human condition. I pick up on the subtlest
clues, I react to the slightest suggestion. In short, I deduct.
Frank: Who told you?
Tim: Brodie.
Brodie: Bayliss threw me out. Lewis says I'm wrecking his marriage.
Everybody hates me. I'm going to go live in a cardboard box.
Kay: Just try and get one from a Frigidaire 28ZGE. They're the biggest.
OK, show of hands. Who here saw what happened and wants to step forward and cooperate fully with the police officers investigating this crime? (pause) Yep. That's it. Our work is done. [Lewis]
The world is full of Gaffneys. Every other piece of work in the world is a Gaffney. The other half is on their way to being a Gaffney. [Kellerman]
Mary: God got you through your stroke.
Frank: No. God, as usual, was in the next county making hurricanes and
hunchbacked babies.
Tim: I'm not confused.
Frank (dismissively): Take a pill.
You...are...beyond...stupid. [Pembleton]
Munch? Oh. You're the one who took too many drugs and damaged his brain. I'm so sorry. [A guest on Meldrick's wedding]
From the mouth of the coroners
Cox: Oh boy. I just love bombs. They make the autopsies so easy.
Frank: Okay, we got multiple chest wounds, an open door, and a weapon
halfway across the living room.
Cox: It's going to be hell writing this one up as a suicide, I'll tell you
that much.
Customs agent: It seems Mr. Mboyo here swallowed half a kilo of latex
wrapped heroin in Amsterdam. That was before catching a flight to Baltimore.
Lewis: Then what?
Cox: Then the condom broke is what.
Scheiner: I hate when that happens.