karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) (01/15/89)
----------- cut here, don't forget to strip junk at the end, too -------------
"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 support of their movement
%%
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 Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
%%
...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. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
... 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. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
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 against Sandra Day O'Connor's
nomination to the Supreme Court
%%
...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 like people"
%%
"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 of the NSA, deputy director of
Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC.
%%
...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 of the NSA, deputy directory of
Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC.
[the statist opinions expressed herein are not those of the cookie editor -ed.]
%%
"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
--
-- uunet!sugar!karl | "We've been following your progress with considerable
-- karl@sugar.uu.net | interest, not to say contempt." -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
-- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018