Collected Quotes K - O
Things people have written or uttered that have inspired me, made me feel emotional, made me laugh, despair or face-palm, made me think, or perhaps made me wish that I could write as well as this or be glad that I don't. And sometimes the irony and hypocrisy burn brightly. Internet comments have been left, grammatically, as found; bear in mind that some are undoubtedly examples of Poe's Law.
POE'S LAW: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article." (Nathan Poe)
And obviously, just because I've quoted someone doesn't mean I endorse (or would ridicule) everything they have to say........
In no particular order except alphabetically by surname or pseudonym.
K
•Sarah Kendzior (1978 - ; American Anthropologist & Author)•
"When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live." (Sarah Kendzior)
""But it worked out for me." This is the refrain of the tenured to the adjunct, the staff to the freelancer, the rich to the poor: "But it worked out for me; the system is fine, it worked out for me."" (Sarah Kendzior)
•John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946; English Economist)•
"Capitalism is the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds." (John Maynard Keynes)
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?" (John Maynard Keynes)
• Ayotolla Khomeini (1902 - 1989; Iranian Theologian & Politician)•
"A man can have sex with animals such as sheep, cows, camels and so on. However, he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village, however selling the meat to the next door village should be fine." (Ayotolla Khomeini)
"If a man sodomises the son, brother, or father of his wife after their marriage, the marriage remains valid." (Ayatolla Khomeini)
"If one commits the act of sodomy with a cow, a ewe, or a camel, their urine and their excrement become impure and even their milk may no longer be consumed. The animal must then be killed as quickly as possible and burned." (Ayatolla Khomeini)
"A woman who has contracted a continuing marriage does not have the right to go out of the house without her husband’s permission; she must remain at his disposal for the fulfilment of any one of his desires, and may not refuse herself to him except for a religiously valid reason." (Ayayolla Khomeini)
"It is not illegal for an adult male to ‘thigh’ or enjoy a young girl who is still in the age of weaning; meaning to place his penis between her thighs, and to kiss her." (Ayatolla Khomeini)
"If a father (or paternal grandfather) marries off his daughter (or granddaughter) in her absence without knowing for a certainty that she is alive, the marriage becomes null and void as soon as it is established that she was dead at the time of marriage." (Ayatolla Khomeini)
"A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate, sodomising the child is OK. If the man penetrates and damages the child then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however, does not count as one of his four permanent wives." (Ayotolla Khomeini)
"It is better for a girl to marry in such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband's house rather than her father's home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in Heaven." (Ayotolla Khomeini)
Lawrence Krauss (1954 - ; American Physicist & Cosmologist)
"Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than the atoms in your right hand…....You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements (the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen), all the things that matter for evolution weren’t created at the beginning of time, they were created in stars. So forget Jesus. Stars died so you could live." (Lawrence Krauss)
"The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it." (Lawrence Krauss)
•Other K•
"So God says, “You are guys are really, really special.” How does his saying it make us special? “But you see, he gave us a soul.” How does our having a soul make us special? Whatever answer you give, you could always say..........“What’s so special about that?" (Shelly Kagan)
"Obvious lies serve a purpose for an administration. They watch who challenges them and who loyally repeats them." (Gary Kasparov)
"Anyone who has spent much time wading through the pious, obscurantist, jargon-filled cant that now passes for 'advanced' thought in the humanities knew it was bound to happen sooner or later: some clever academic, armed with the not-so-secret passwords ('hermeneutics', 'transgressive', 'Lacanian', 'hegemony', to name a few) would write a completely bogus paper, submit it to an au courant journal, and have it accepted - Sokal's piece uses all the right terms. It cites all the best people. It whacks sinners (white men, the 'real world'), applauds the virtuous (women, general metaphysical lunacy) - And it is complete, unadulterated bullshit - a fact that somehow escaped the attention of the high-powered editors of Social Text, who must now be experiencing that queasy sensation that afflicted the Trojans the morning after they pulled that nice big gift horse into their city." (Gary Kamiya)
"Denying a person is female because they superficially look male is like saying a person can't sing well because they don't look artistic." (Internet commenter: kermit)
"I think, believers, that God is the opinions that you can’t otherwise justify. God is your intellectual laziness. God is your ego. God is that which you need God to be. God is X. God is the sum of all your wilful ignorance. God is a convenience. God is exclusionary. God is your bigotry. God is an excuse. God is your clever ploy to avoid thinking, responsibility and the need to develop a sense of social justice. God is your lie." (T J Kincaid)
"The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear." (Jiddu Krishnamurti)
"Very American to decide we are bored with COVID and therefore it is over." (Jeff Kasanoff)
"The only way to solve the problem of contraception is to solve the problem of infallibility." (Hans Küng)
"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent." (Stanley Kubrick)
"When people tell me, ‘God has blessed you with the gift of music’, you’re damn right I get offended. I did not practice hours a day for eighteen years to have my success attributed to a myth." (Alex Krob)
“It is the Godfather, not God the Father, who makes you an offer you can’t refuse.” (Peter Kreeft)
"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired." (Franz Kafka)
"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true. The other is to refuse to accept what is true." (Soren Kierkegaard)
".....it’s been centuries since anybody reasonable thought that philosophy is a science rather than performance art." (Valdis Klētnieks)
"It's really awesome how easily religious people can see through the fraud of other religions. If you have four Napoleons in a mental home, each of them easily see through the other three as obvious frauds." (Stefan Kaitschick)
"Faith is a wondrous thing; it is not only capable of moving mountains, but also of making you believe that a herring is a race horse." (Arthur Koestler)
"Intuitional truth doesn’t require a defense — a justification of the steps that brought one to this knowledge — because this kind of truth isn’t a result of reasoning by steps to a conclusion. It’s an obvious truth that no rational person who understands the nature of the issue would deny." (Gregg Koukl)
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." (Alan Kay)
"If we break free of materialism, we have a better view of reality. Life is 3 dimensional. An embryo develops in 3 dimensions, while the information in DNA is 2 dimensional. Therefore we know, or should know, that DNA is not the ultimate blueprint for life." (Faigel Katz)
"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off." (Joe Klaas)
"The wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city. They went out, got an education, work hard, and earned it. I shouldn’t have to worry about being accosted. I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work every day." (Justin Keller)
"Fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist Form is incompatible with higher education. In fundamentalism, you have all the truths. In education, you're searching for truths." (David W Key)
"Astrology gives us answers to questions that science simply can’t. Ask a scientist what your horoscope is and they simply can’t do it." (Internet commenter: Kabbor)
L
•C.S. Lewis (1898 - 1963; English Theologian & Author)•
"I still think the argument from design the weakest possible ground for Theism, and what may be called the argument from un-design the strongest for Atheism." (C.S. Lewis)
"Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist." (C.S. Lewis)
•Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799; German Scientist & Author)•
"When a book and a head collide and there is a hollow sound, does the hollow sound always emanate from the book?" (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
"A book is like a mirror: if a fool looks in, do not expect an apostle to look out." (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
•James A. Lindsay (1979 - ; American Mathematician & Author)•
"How many miracle claims have a stamp of approval not coming from a religious body that has a vested interest in stamping them for approval?" (James Lindsay)
"Axioms have to be judged against how "self-evident" they really are, how useful they are, how little they assume, and in other such ways. This, then, is why the theistic worldview axioms seemed more reasonable in the past than now; we now see that the purported existence of God is not self-evident, has limited utility with little or no explanatory power, and yet assumes an awful lot." (James Lindsay)
"The truth values of every proposition within the reach of the mathematical system are already determined, and mathematicians essentially explore the system to find those truth values. It has a real feeling of discovery to it, but the underlying axioms are where we made it up, to put it loosely. Since many of the simpler axioms are based on our "self-evident" experience of reality, the map closely resembles the terrain, and it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking the description is reality." (James Lindsay)
"Among the advantages of anchoring on a perfect, eternal "God" is simplifying the process of ethical reasoning by essentially eliminating the ongoing requirement to assess and modify one's own ethics." (James Lindsay)
"The "God" that we often hear about is a conflation of the abstract and the numinous with the real, and then a personification of the ideal on top of that." (James Lindsay)
"Math is way more abstract and less concerned with physical reality than physics. We're content to live in our axiomatic playground, and if physicists, etc., can make use of it, great. If not, meh." (James Lindsay)
"Atheists are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you're trying to argue from a position of moral superiority." (James Lindsay)
•H.P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937; American Author)•
"Someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." (H.P. Lovecraft)
"Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity" (H.P. Lovecraft)
•Other L•
"That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose - a god who simply is." (Stanislaw Lem)
"Today's American society demands an assumed ideal life in which there is a compulsive need to create meaningful memories which are worthy of envy and accepted as truth. In reality, the experience falls flat and can be generally seen as unexceptional." (Jena Love)
"May my last breath be drawn through a pipe and exhaled in a pun." (Charles Lamb)
"The only thing I don't like about them is they sell foreign language versions of the KJB. I don't think that's right. We know the only true translation is the 1600's version in English. It's too risky for anybody to translate that into other languages. Mistakes can creep in.......and that can lead to heresy. True Christians should only read English. (Leyenda)
"If only atheists were more like evangelical men whose wives were taught to obey them. In biblical Christianity, women cannot teach men and they cannot exercise authority over men as far as church matters. If only atheist women could not exercise authority over atheist men about atheist matters. The humiliation of atheism being conquered by feminist women could have been avoided." (Damon Linker)
"If you're going to start by saying "nothing is impossible to God", what the hell is the use of investigating the possibility of anything?" (Dave Luckett)
"The Bible says Muslims will always be the enemy of God's people. Certainly a true prophesy." (Steve Lira)
"Nobody dies because they don't have access to health care." (Raúl Labrador)
"Capitalism is religion. Banks are churches. Bankers are priests. Wealth is heaven. Poverty is hell. Rich people are saints. Poor people are sinners. Commodities are blessings. Money is God." (Miguel D Lewis)
"I've got the solution to most crime in America. From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It's just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we're gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can't tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have." (Rush Limbaugh)
"That's the beauty of heaven......we can leave our brains behind." (Internet commenter: Lainy68)
"There are spiritual storytellers and there are soulful storytellers. I hope to be a soulful storyteller. I see the two kinds as two different directions. Spiritual is ascending. Sky, God and all that. I hope my storytelling is going down into the earth, is wetter, has more moisture." (Jackie Leven)
"If there was no such thing as science, you'd be right." (Sean Lock)
"Unlike mathematical theorems, scientific results can't be proved. They can only be tested again and again, until only a fool would not believe them. I cannot prove that electrons exist..........if you don't believe in them I have a high voltage cattle prod I'm willing to apply as an argument on their behalf. Electrons speak for themselves." (Seth Lloyd)
“Nothing I believe in is based on minimal understanding, except Faith itself.” (Internet commenter Lord Sector)
"I read on Woman's Day magazine a while back that 95% of the Europeans, Latinos and Mexicans didn't have their babies boys cut when they were little. It is a known fact that uncircumcised males abuse themselves a lot more than the normal ones. No wonder those Mexicans are so poor, they spend all their money on detergent. God said he wanted his male children cut and that's just the way it should be. We had our boys clipped extra close when the doctor said the more skin we had cut off the less sensitivity they'd have down there. It was the Christian thing to do." (Internet commenter: Lynelle)
"I watched Hell-Raiser 2 last night and well... hell looks BAD. Trust me... you don't want to go there for ETERNITY." (Internet commenter: Livin'4Christ)
"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people that you do." (Anne Lamott)
"Gay and religious? Fight your perverse inclinations and unclean thoughts. It can be done. You were not born religious." (Weston Lockley)
"Only the most reckless poet would attempt to describe the sensation of an orgasm under LSD." (Timothy Leary)
"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." (Abraham Lincoln)
"Clearly, in the first few chapters of Genesis, we have a historical account of the creation of the world and life on it from the most reliable eyewitness, God himself." (Jean Lightner)
“When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled “made in Germany”; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism.”’ (Halford E. Luccock)
"The sailor does not pray for wind, he learns to sail." (Gustaf Lindborg)
"Our son brought this book home from college over holiday break and I must say I was disgusted with it. It's a shame that our youth is being brainwashed against their own Christian beliefs in college now. People like this author who freely push this garbage down our children's throats should burn in Hell. Since they don't believe in Hell, I hope they die a slow miserable death death, then rot. Thanks so much for brainwashing our son into this fairy-tale garbage." (Internet commenter: LilDev69)
"There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages." (Richard Lederer)
"There are just some kind of men who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can see look down the street and see the results." (Harper Lee)
"When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled 'made in Germany'; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism'" (Harold E Luccock)
"But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word 'Fascism' and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty." (Sinclair Lewis)
"As an organization we are now and always have been firmly against antifa. Whatever is the opposite of antifa, that's what we are." (Los Angeles Police Department social media statement)
"When I have in public spoken to religious people who tell me that, "I used to be an atheist too, just like you!" Inever ask these people what convinced them that atheism was wrong or incorrect. I ask them what persuaded them that atheism was correct at the time they were an atheist. Their responses have been enlightening to me in that they demonstrate that they gave little thought to their previous positions. Most were not atheists in an intellectual sense, they were merely hedonists." (Joseph Langston)
"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." (Dorothea Lange)
"There are 6 admonishments in the Bible concerning homosexual activity and our enemies are always throwing them up to us usually in a vicious way and very much out of context. What they don't want us to remember is that there are 362 admonishments in the Bible concerning heterosexual activity. I don't mean to imply by this that God doesn't love straight people, only that they seem to require a great deal more supervision." (Lynn Lavner)
"In the emergency room they have what's called rape kits, where a woman can get cleaned out." (Jodie Laudenberg)
"Keep in mind that just because there may be a phenomenon to which we do not have an answer is not a reason to accept whatever explanation someone pulls out of their ass." (Steve Lundquist)
"Believers: Take a couple of minutes and think about all the things you would do if you were God. After you have accomplished that task, contemplate the fact that you worship a God who hasn't." (Tiger C. Lewis)
"God is the condition of the possibility of anything existing at all." (Damon Linker)
"To the West, it seems hardly imaginable that the relationship between man and man (morality) could be maintained without reference to a Supreme Being, while to the Chinese it is equally amazing that men should not, or could not, behave toward one another as decent beings without thinking of their indirect relationship through a third party." (Yu Tang Lin)
"Yes, I suppose it’s sometimes odd that atheists sometimes say Jesus and Oh My God. But odder than the religious saying "let’s be reasonable?"" (Hugh Laurie)
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides." (Ignatius Loyola)
"There are lots of claimed "miracles", but none is verifiable. That's why nobody who goes to Lourdes leaves behind a glass eye or an extra chromosome." (Quentin Langley)
"There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must........invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth." (Martin Luther)
"It has to be understood that there are no innocent people in Gaza. Everyone is affiliated with Hamas." (Avigdor Lieberman)
"What is there? Everything. So what isn’t there? Nothing." (Norman Levitt)
"If a woman has the right to an abortion, why shouldn't a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapists's pursuit of sexual freedom doesn't (in most cases) result in anyone's death." (Lawrence Lockman)
"Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because the business of the engine is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." (Ada Lovelace)
"It has been argued that complete objectivity is impossible, since scholars are human beings, with their own loyalties and biases. This is no doubt true, but does not affect the issue. To borrow an analogy, any surgeon will admit that complete asepsis is also impossible, but one does not, for that reason, perform surgery in a sewer." (Bernard Lewis)
"Saying that ex nihilo creation of concrete objects is possible with enough power is like saying that barfing up a missed lunch is possible with a sufficiently strenuous dry heave.” (Felipe Leon)
M
•Rollo May (1909 - 1994; American Psychologist & Author)•
"Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it." (Rollo May)
"Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own." (Rollo May)
•Matt McCormick (American Philosopher)•
"A lot of people are quite impressed with these God arguments throwing around probability claims, but in the end, what the Bayesian account of epistemic probability amounts to is a measure of S's surprise that something is true. So "On the God hypothesis, the fine tuning we observe in the universe is highly probable," amounts to "I would find it very surprising that God doesn't exist in a world with these physical features." And one's subjective measure of surprise, to put it mildly, just doesn't count for jack. Medieval priests would have been exceedingly surprised to find out that the bubonic plague was caused by a bacteria, not by evil demon possession or the corruption of sin. On their view, this sentence seems justified: "On the sinners-are-punished hypothesis, the health problems we observe in plague victims would be very likely." Therefore, the plague is caused by sin." (Matt McCormick)
"For decades, the patent offices in the U.S. and Britain were deluged with submissions for patents on perpetual motion machines—contraptions that would produce more energy than was put into them, and thus solve all of humanity’s energy needs forever. Such a device is highly dubious, if not impossible, given what we know about the laws of nature. After wasting countless frustrating hours reviewing these proposals only to reject them, the patent offices adopted a new policy. They ruled that no more patents applications for perpetual motion machines would be accepted. We should draw the same lesson about God." (Matt McCormick)
•H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956; American Journalist & Essayist)•
"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true." (H.L. Mencken)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary." (H.L. Mencken)
"The men that American people admire the most extravagantly are the most daring liars. The men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth" (H.L. Mencken)
"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." (H.L. Mencken)
"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing." (H.L. Mencken)
"One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms." (H.L. Mencken)
"As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." (H.L. Mencken)
•Jean Meslier (1664 - 1729; French Priest)•
"Theology is but a pretended science. Theology rests itself on principles which are contestable, and are hazardous suppositions, conceived in ignorance, propagated by enthusiasm or bad intention, adopted by timid credulity, and preserved by habit." (Jean Meslier)
"Anxious meditations upon God, an object impossible to grasp, and which, however, is supposed to be very important to him, can but put a man into bad humor, and produce in his brain dangerous transports. When interest, vanity, and ambition are joined to such a morose disposition, society necessarily becomes troubled." (Jean Meslier)
"How I suffered when I had to preach to you those pious lies that I detest in my heart. What remorse your credulity caused me! A thousand times I was on the point of breaking out publicly and opening your eyes, but a fear stronger than myself held me back, and forced me to keep silence until my death." (Jean Meslier)
"If religion was clear, it would have fewer attractions for the ignorant. They need obscurity, mysteries, fables, miracles, incredible things, which keep their brains perpetually at work. Romances, idle stories, tales of ghosts and witches, have more charms for the vulgar than true narrations." (Jean Meslier)
"By metaphysics, God is made a pure spirit, but has modern theology advanced one step further than the theology of the barbarians?" (Jean Meslier)
"Ask a barbarian what causes a clock to move, he will answer, "a spirit!" Ask our philosophers what moves the universe, they will tell you "it is a spirit."" (Jean Meslier)
"God of modern theology is a sterile being. According to his supposed nature he can neither occupy any place, nor move matter, nor produce a visible world, nor propagate either men or Gods. The metaphysical God is a workman without hands; he is able but to produce clouds, suspicions, reveries, follies, and quarrels." (Jean Meslier)
"The intelligence of man no more proves the intelligence of God than the malice of men proves the malice of this God." (Jean Meslier)
"A being who has no equals, can not be susceptible of glory. Glory can result but from the comparison of his own excellence with that of others." (Jean Meslier)
"I see the human race continually occupied in protecting itself from the wicked tricks of this Providence, which is said to be busy with the care of their happiness." (Jean Meslier)
"God rather resembles those unnatural mothers who, forgetting the unfortunate fruits of their illicit amours, abandon their children as soon as they are born; and who, pleased to have conceived them, expose them without mercy to the caprices of fate." (Jean Meslier)
•John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873; English Philosopher & Politician)•
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question." (John Stuart Mill)
"Conservative people are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservative." (John Stuart Mill)
•Tim Minchin (1975 - ; Australian Comedian & Musician)•
"But evolution is only a theory!” Which is true. I mean, it is only a theory, it’s good that they say that. I think, it gives you hope, doesn’t it? That.........that maybe they feel the same way about the theory of gravity, and they might just float the fuck away." (Tim Minchin)
"I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon. I have but one life and it is short and unimportant, but thanks to recent scientific advances, I get to live twice as long as my great, great, great, great uncles and aunts. Twice as long to live this life of mine, twice as long to love this wife of mine, twice as many years of friends and wine." (Tim Minchin)
"Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be not magic." (Tim Minchin)
"If you just close your eyes and block your ears to the accumulated knowledge of the last 2000 years, then morally, guess what? You're off the hook, just thank Christ you only have to read one book." (Tim Minchin)
"It’s quite hard being right in the face of people who are wrong without sounding like a fuckwit. People go “do you think the vast majority of the world is wrong”, well yes. I don’t know how to say that nicely, but yes." (Tim Minchin)
"Isn't this enough, just this world?" (Tim Minchin)
"I don't know what it is about "magic happens" - stickers on cars but every time I see one I wanna get out my permanent marker and sneak over and write underneath it "so does cot death"." (Tim Minchin)
"Arts degrees are awesome. They give meaning where there is none. And believe me, there is none." (Tim Minchin)
•Ashley Montague (1905 - 1999; British - American Anthropologist)•
"We flatter ourselves that we can make machines that think like human beings, but omit to observe that we can also make human beings who think like machines." (Ashley Montagu)
"Man is a mythmaking animal who prefers to embrace the myths that keep him comfortable rather than inquire into the facts that enjoin him to think." (Ashley Montagu)
•Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592; French Author)•
"I don't break the law made for crooks, when I take away my own property - thus I am not obliged to conform to the law made for murderers when I deprive myself of my own life." (Michel de Montaigne)
"Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, but he will make gods by the dozen." (Michel de Montaigne)
•Larry Moran (Canadian Biochemist)•
"………no matter how you define knowledge, philosophers haven't been very successful at adding to our knowledge base. They're good at questions………but not so good at answers. Thus, it's reasonable to claim that science (broad definition) is the only proven method of acquiring knowledge. If that's scientism then I think it's a good working hypothesis." (Larry Moran)
"I get the distinct impression that almost all philosophers of science have reached the same conclusions and they support those (mostly false) conclusions by referencing each other instead of going back to the scientific literature." (Larry Moran)
•Haruki Murakami (1949 - ; Japanese Author)•
"If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, he isn't. And if that's what God's like, I wouldn't worry about it." (Haruki Murakami)
"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." (Haruki Murakami)
•P.Z. Myers (1957 - ; American Biologist)•
"Isn't it possible that deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and divine command philosophy are really just attempts to rationalize emotional states and empathy, just as Randian objectivism is trying to rationalize greed and selfishness, and that the philosophy is irrelevant to the humanity of good actions? Damn. Questioning philosophy is practicing philosophy itself. There's no way out of that trap." (P.Z. Myers)
"We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned." (P.Z. Myers)
•Other M•
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." (Delos B. McKown)
"Conservatives aren't just liberals who haven't been hugged enough. They're coming at us - coming at this country, in fact, - with everything they have and reading them poetry while playing bongos, and just hoping they'll play by Marquess of Queensbury rules is suicide." (Susan Montgomery)
"I hate how people talk about sex work as "selling your body" when all work under capitalism is exactly that. Corporations rent your mind for ideas, your body to do labor, your time to make them profit. Under capitalism, you sell your body for the right to live." (Madegan Morrison)
"I was advocating for vaccines to an avid anti-vax person other day who asked "Do you consider yourself an expert on vaccines?" I said "Yes." Her response: "And you don't think that's a conflict of interest?".......and that's where we're at it 2019." (Michael Mina, the immunologist, not the chef).
"If materialism cannot explain your conception of consciousness then the problem is with your conception of consciousness. It is designed to invalidate materialism. You are going around in a motivated circle." (Lal McLennan)
"When you're saved by grace and good works are as "filthy rags", what does it matter what you do? That's the stinking rot of what mainstream American Christian dogma has degenerated to. Millions and millions of unaccountable people whose measure of morality is whether you believe something is true or not." (Benjamin Muller)
"Knowledge on its own is not enough, we also have to learn wisdom. At least that’s what my Invisible Magic Friend says." (Tom McLeish)
"A set of integers that spans to infinity will have members that are transfinite." (Gordon Mullings)
"Any Christian who denies getting a little smile on their god loving face when any news comes out about a threat against their precious Israel is a liar." (Jimmy Mallett)
"I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and, in 1996, catastrophically collapse." (Robert Metcalfe)
"I was advocating for vaccines to an avid anti-vax person other day who asked: “Do you consider yourself an expert on vaccines.” I said "Yes." Her response: "And you don’t think that’s a conflict of interest?"…….and that’s where we’re at in 2019." (Michael Mina)
"Casinos treat gambling addicts with more decorum, honesty, and integrity than apologists treat their downline." (Cassidy McGillicuddy)
"OMG I just read that China is 12 hours ahead of America.......Why didn't they warn them about 9/11??? Thats such bullshit fuck you China like 3 billion people died!!!! (Internet commenter: Morton)
"Fideism can be described as the refusal to take any ethical stance on one's inner actions whatsoever. It involves a lack of inner decency.......you have already given up on the whole idea of an ethics for inner action." (Thomas Metzinger)
"Call me old fashioned but if immigrants want to come here LEGALLY they need to do it the proper way by covering their naked bodies in baby oil and posing in girl on girl porn until they grab the attention of a billionaire who buys them a Genius Visa." (Tom Muller)
"If, as evolutionists claim, all of mankind evolved from the same primitive life-source, then how did we end up with 7,000 different languages?" (Donald J Morrison)
"There are no mass shootings in Japan because there are no video games there." (Kevin McCarthy)
"Just because it’s turtles all the way down, doesn’t mean it’s turtles all the way up." (Kevin Mitchell)
"Obama is not clinically insane but has been specifically programmed by his Communist handlers along with his Muslim allies to take America over the cliff.....Obama is totally controlled as an authentic Manchurian Candidate." (Austin Miles)
"One must note the feature of religion that keeps it on the front page and on prime time: it kills." (Martin Marty)
"That this span is brief, that consciousness is an accidental gift of blind processes, makes our existence all the more precious and our responsibilities for it all the more profound." (Ian McKewan)
"It is not acceptable to have a religion where the alternative to faith is punishment - that’s how you train dogs, not develop people." (Deng Ming-Dao)
"The first question any sane, self-loving woman would ask upon realizing that the vast majority of males are rapists is how to keep those rapists away from girls and women. The fact that so many women instead ask how to keep the males from being rapists is a manifestation of feminine masochism." (Internet commenter: Margaret)
"Einstein was only a genius in his own mind. what did he do that was so great other than invent the light bulb? who cares about that anyway." (Internet commenter: Mr McGoo)
"Pedophiles who pay children for sex are not really rapists, because the child consents, then performs the act, indicating they understand the nature of the contract." (Tom Martin)
"Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning." (Henry Miller)
"When Noah’s ark finally rested atop Mount Ararat, the kangaroos stepped off and hopped 7,726 miles straight to Australia and without any opposable thumbs, they picked up every bone from their own dead as not to leave a trace of their migration." (Steve Miller)
"I've been called a lot of names and accused of a lot of things by ER patients but it's surreal have a patient accuse me of falsifying their COVID result - because they don't believe the virus is real - as I'm actively trying to keep them from dying from multi-organ failure from COVID." (Ryan Marino)
"Aliens are NOT demons? Puhleeze.........now that is crazy talk. How do they explain reports of when people use the name Jesus the Aliens run?" (Internet commenter: MROD)
"Some suggest that 'acting responsibly' means not saying anything that you know will provoke other people into acting violently. Salman Rushdie was irresponsible because he knew that The Satanic verses would provoke riots. Charlie Hebdo was irresponsible because it knew its cartoons would cause trouble. Think of the logic of this argument: that those most willing to be provoked, or to threaten, should be the ones who effectively decide what can and cannot be said. Rather than fingering the perpetrators of violence for being irresponsible, it puts the onus on the victims to act responsibly.......It is also an argument that turns the notion of tolerance on its head. Tolerance used to mean the willingness to accept things being said with which one did not agree. Now, it is the insistence that one should keep silent about things with which others disagree. Tolerance, in other words, is no longer about opening up society. It's about closing it down. If you want an open, plural society, if you want to challenge bigotry, if you want to defend freedom of religion, if you want to question power, you need to defend the right to give offence. Full stop. No buts." (Kenan Malik)
"The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money." (Bernard Meltzer)
"I am first a man and only then a Frenchman.....because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French." (Charles de Montesquieu)
"If we came from monkies, then we would have proof already because then the monkies we have in captivity would turn into a human." (Internet commenter: Jolie Monique)
"To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I wouldn't be wrong to ask." (George Mather)
"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church." (Ferdinand Magellan)
"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes." (James Morrow)
"Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat." (John Morley)
"Let's face it; God has a big ego problem. Why do we always have to worship him?" (Bill Maher)
"There is a soft drink company, believe it may be Pepsi, that is using aborted baby cells to flavor pop. When you think they have hit bottom.......look out.........the bottom is still a ways to go." (Internet commenter: Mom2ten)
"From my rotting body flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity." (Edvard Munch)
"I don’t want to fly in a plane built on faith and poetry." (Diane MacPherson)
"Without an omnipotent being, there would be no way for there to be anything but maximum entropy. Thus, the fact that entropy is increasing is - in and of itself - proof of God's existance." (Internet commenter: MarioFanaticXV)
"To rebut creationism you pretty much have to be a biologist, chemist, geologist, philosopher, lawyer and historian all rolled into one. While to advocate creationism, you just have to be an idiot." (Tom Morris)
"Consider what theistic religions offer as God’s actual purpose for our lives: glorifying him and enjoying his presence forever. Surely we can ask - I hereby do ask - ‘What’s so great about that?" (Stephen Maitzen)
"When you look at all the groups who have given prophecies at various times, they have one thing in common: they all failed. For most of us, this is a history of successive groups with failed prophecies. But for the groups themselves, prophecy never fails…...." (Gordon Melton)
""Theology" is a strange discipline. Ususally in an "ology" one studies the thing denoted by the prefix. But because God is supposed to be inscrutable theology cannot study the thing denoted by the prefix. Mostly, theology is the study of itself." (Puck Mendelssohn)
"A psychopath may make many morally horrendous choices, but they will not include choosing the brain of a psychopath." (Raoul Martinez)
"Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen." (Richard Mourdock)
"Female reproductive organs rely on gravity of one falling egg, which is massive, and a male relies on charged rise at a penis, which ejaculates multiple excited sperm. A pivotal puffball egg replicates a massive accretion, while a dense sperm replicates an atom in an accretion. Other female and male features of fall or rise, and curvature or sharpness also apply. Synchronization with our epicycle is by massive daily to monthly cycles for estrogen ovulation and charged daily to yearly cycles for testosterone arousal. As in physics, females tend to hold and explode life from real origins of a home nucleus, often with ignorance of the world. Males sort continually as an edge to a world to ideal ends of a home nucleus, often with violence in a world." (Marcus David Morgan)
"Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” I like that approach. Meanwhile, creationists are off in the corner threatening that their giant is going to beat us up if we don’t accept what they’re telling us." (David MacMillan)
"Obama has released the Homo demons on the black man. Look out black woman. A white Homo may take your man." (James David Manning)
"Capitalism tends to destroy its two sources of wealth: Nature and Human Beings." (Karl Marx)
"A popular Auschwitz guard with a long marriage is the very definition of mental health. Moral considerations do not form the basis of mental heath – a compliant Nazi is considered more ‘healthy’ than an outcast one. This form of ‘social ethics’ is largely due to the Jewish influence over psychology." (Stefan Molyneux)
"George Boole was the inventor of the typical TRUE / FALSE logic used all over today. He lived in the first half of the 1800’s, dying at the age of 49 after succumbing to a bad case of the false.” (Internet commenter: Michael)
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed." (Herman Melville)
"It does seem to me increasingly that the two markers of a civilised society are bicycles and doctor-assisted suicide." (Henry Marsh)
"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate." (Toni Morrison)
"Religious people claim that it's just the fundamentalists' of each religion that cause problems - there's got to be something wrong with the religion itself if those who strictly adhere to its most fundamental principles are violent bigots and sexists." (David McAfee)
N
•Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900; German Philosopher)•
"......if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
"That little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of nature are constantly broken; such an enhancement of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
“Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
"There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary beings." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
•Other N•
"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." (Vladimir Nabokov)
"He's just so stupid. He's so breathtakingly stupid that the above statement is all it takes for every person reading this to know exactly who I'm talking about." (Kumail Nanjiani)
"Imagine you were a vampire nowhere near the Middle East and don't know who Jesus is but the day after he dies you gotta figure out why lower case t's started hurting." (Andrew Nadeau)
"It is widely appreciated that inference of a causal relation requires documentation of the temporal sequence of the phenomena being investigated. This principle applies to the study of life and death no less than in other areas. Recently, there has been considerable excitement in this field, because a breakthrough has been achieved in the mathematical modeling of migration. When the effects of migration are eliminated, a close correspondence between birth and death rates emerges, but with a variable induction period, ranging from less than a day to over 100 years." (Thomas N. Newman & Warren S Browner)
"No, God's Penis is not a biological organ. I never said God's penis was the same as man's penis. Obviously it wouldn't be. That is why I pointed out God has a Holy, Righteous Penis. That is to say, it's not the same as man's corrupted, fleshy one.............You cannot insert your evil prejudicial ideas of man's penis onto God - which is exactly what you are doing. God's Penis is not equal to man's penis. It's really not hard to understand." (Internet commenter: Navaros)
"Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community now is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don't have such a theory right now......we've got a bag of powerful intuitions and a handful of notions" (Paul Nelson)
"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'." (Bob Newhart)
"The fact that one apple added to one apple invariably gives two apples helps in the teaching of arithmetic, but has no bearing on the truth of the proposition that 1 + 1 = 2." (James R Newman)
"If theists can believe in God while for all practical purposes ignoring the God of philosophy, then atheists can disbelieve in God doing the same. I don't see why it is acceptable to have "simple faith" that God exists and be totally ignorant of philosophy and theology, but why an atheist is supposed to have mastered all of philosophy and theology (or at least that dealing with God's existence) before he or she can express disbelief in God." (David Nickol)
"Let’s rename ‘school’ as ‘uterus’ so maybe Republican lawmakers will want to do something about the children dying inside them." (Internet commenter: Nathan G)
"The person who thinks he can't be fooled has just fooled himself." (Joe Nickell)
"We’ve all been there. Friday night art opening. Dressed to kill. Cheap wine in one hand, other hand gesticulating wildly as you chat with your partner about the art. You stand before a group of paintings, and you’re intrigued. You haven’t encountered this artist before and you simply must know more. After absorbing the paintings for a little bit longer, your eyes shift to the artist statement tacked to the wall. 5 minutes later you’ve read and re-read the artist statement 4 times, and you have no clue what the fuck the artist has been smoking." (Jeanette Nyberg)
"In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them." (Johann von Neumann)
"Leviathon is a spirit I have battled as well. It was a hard battle but was won. It was about four months or more ago. My wife and I were in McDonalds and were having a conversation with an angel and Leviathon had come up. I told the angel that i wanted to fight this demon and he said I could. On the way back to the hotel I asked the angel if he could bring the demon to a predestinated place and he said yes. I figured that since Leviathon was from the depths of the sea he would be used to the cold water so I filled the tub up with scalding hot water and blessed the water. The angels (there were two now) brought Leviathon bound to the tub and fought with me. We all pulled our swords from our hips and began running this demon through with all my strength and everything I had. I would say it took at least half an hour or more. We were all spent but the battle was won." (Internet commenter: nautical999)
O
•Robert Oerter (American Physicist)•
"We're always in that Catch-22: if we address the real reasons people actually have for believing in God, we're ignoring the sophisticated theological philosophical reasons. If we address the sophisticated theological philosophical reasons, we're accused of ignoring the real reasons people believe." (Robert Oerter)
"If ESP is to fit inside a physicalist viewpoint, it must operate in such a way as to obey fundamental physical principles like conservation of energy and the speed of light limitation. Precognition can be ruled out, for instance, because it violates causality. So physicalism is falsifiable: if someone can reliably have foreknowledge, then physicalism is false. Theism, on the other hand, is completely content-free. God is all-powerful, so any sort of miracle is possible. God "works in mysterious ways," so nothing that happens needs, or can have, an explanation. Theism puts no constraints on what could possibly happen and therefore is unfalsifiable." (Robert Oerter)
"Maybe the reason philosophers can't find a decent characterization of causes is that they are not really a part of the universe. Rather, they are something we invent - maybe in a rather haphazard and inconsistent manner - to help us track important aspects of the world around us." (Robert Oerter)
•Denys O'Leary (1950 - ; Canadian Journalist & Author)•
"What woman, otherwise consigned to being a spinster, would marry the chimp if she didn't get the man? After all, the chimp is supposed to be 98% of a man. Actually, the chimp isn't a man at all. Every woman in the world knows this. None are the least bit interested in the chimp - unless entertaining children by a visit to the zoo. So, my question is, what is this 98% similarity thing based on, other than to discredit genetics?" (Denyse O'Leary)
"A simple illustration will show that even if most of the information in DNA were never used, it would still be valuable. Let us say I have a directory of members of a club I belong to. I never use most of the phone numbers. Many numbers may never be used by anyone. Does lack of use make that proportion of the directory junk?" (Denyse O'Leary)
•George Orwell (1903 - 1950; English Author)•
"[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude toward life........human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice.........Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet." (George Orwell)
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." (George Orwell)
"He was a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms – one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the thought police, the stability of the Party depended." (George Orwell)
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." (George Orwell)
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." (George Orwell)
•Other O•
"Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions." (Carol Joyce Oates)
"The many subsequent centuries of sterile endeavor made it abundantly clear that the human intellect has no such antecedent knowledge of natural things (i.e., like the builder's knowledge of his plan for a house). Any attempt to grasp the form of a natural thing in this fashion is just as liable to complete error as was Aristotle's view in this instance (i.e., about the materials and structure of the heart). The only way that has proven fruitful for specific knowledge of natural things has been careful, prolonged observation of detail with elaborate experiment, carried out through exact measurements and submitted to involved mathematical treatment." (Joseph Owen)
"The recent talk about taxing churches flies right in the face of this country's principles. The Founding Fathers made it VERY CLEAR that Church and State shall remain separate. Tax us and I'm not sure we could afford the lobbysists to fight against abortion and gay marriage!" (Joel Osteen)
"God, manufactured by mortals in their own quintessential image, exists only to make daily life bearable despite the path that every one of us treads toward extinction. As long as men are obliged to die, some of them, unable to endure the prospect, will concoct fond illusions. We cannot assassinate or kill an illusion. In fact, illusion is more likely to kill us – for God puts to death everything that stands up to him, beginning with reason, intelligence, and the critical mind. All the rest follows in a chain reaction." (Michael Onfray)
"Does planting trees help bring people to Christ? It's like going to third-world countries to feed the hungry. It doesn't do a starving man any good to keep him alive for another day if he's doomed to hell anyway. It doesn't do anyone any good to plant trees for people if they haven't heard about Jesus." (Internet commenter: OnceWasLost)
"I don't care if people want to believe that Mr and Mrs Potato Head show them how to be nice to people and are available to hear prayers. What I do care about are the fundamentalist believers who think the Potato Heads will destroy us all if we allow spinach and Brussels sprouts to be served at the same meal and legislate against that vegetable pairing." (Internet commenter: Obstaclechick)
"When the polio vaccine dropped in 1955 people lined up to get it & we were 2 years away from artificial satellites. Now in 2021 we carry external world-brains in our pockets & there's robots on Mars and idiots think the COVID vaccine is full of wizard poison." (Patton Oswalt)
"Science doesn't know everything? Well science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop." (Dara O'Briain)
"I find that I’m a rationalist by inclination, but my rationalism leads to the conclusion that empiricism is the only sensible way to go." (Ben Orlin)
"One generation of homosexual 'marriages' would depopulate a nation, and, if sufficiently widespread, would extinguish its people. Our marriage laws should not abet national suicide." (Dallin H Oakes)
"Since when is a scientific hypothesis confirmed by philosophical gymnastics, not data?” (H Allen Orr)
"While exposure to other worldviews and free exchange of ideas are good things, college is not the place for that - undergraduates are too young and impressionable." (Internet commenter: Otto T Goat)
Collected Quotes A - E
"…..big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public."
(Raymond Chandler)
Collected Quotes P - T
"It is misleading for creationists to characterize science in general and evolution in particular as "godless." Science is godless in the same way that plumbing is godless. Evolutionary biology is no more or less based on a "dogmatic philosophy" of naturalism than are medicine and farming. ... Surely it is unreasonable to complain of a "priesthood" of plumbers who only consider naturalistic explanations of stopped drains and do not consider the "alternative hypothesis" that the origin of the backed-up toilet was the design of an intervening malicious spirit."
(Robert T. Pennock)
Collected Quotes F - J
"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting the rest.........We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors."
(R Buckminster Fuller)
