Quotes, December 2003
01. Intelligent thinking means an increment of freedom in action - an emancipation from chance and fatality. "Thought" represents the suggestion of a way of response that is different from that which would have been followed if intelligent observation had not effected an inference as to the future.
- John Dewey
02. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
- Oscar Wilde
03. The object of oratory alone is not truth but persuasion.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay
04. If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead.
- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist’s Almanac"
05. I’d call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.
- Woody Allen
06. Twenty is no age to be a prude.
- Molière
07. They tried to make me go to Catholic school, too. I lasted a very short time. When the penguin came after me with a ruler, I was out of there.
- Frank Zappa
08. Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
- Bertrand Russell
09. Women should be obscene, and not heard.
- Groucho Marx
10. Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
11. If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything.
- Marva N. Collins
12. Love’s like the measles - all the worse when it comes late in life.
- Douglas Jerrold
13. There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. The people you can bravo and hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.
- Bette Davis
14. Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; Or he can, but does not want to; Or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, Then how come evil in the world?
- Epicurus, 350-270 BC
15. Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.
- Henry Steele Commager
16. An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.
- Confucious
17. There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
- George Bernhard Shaw
18. Force always attracts men of low morality.
- Albert Einstein
19. So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
- Voltarine de Cleyre
20. The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
- Edmund Burke
21. When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.
- Robert M. Pirsig
22. The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
23. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
- Edmund Burke
24. What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
- Thomas Paine
25. Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
- Robert G. Ingersoll
26. It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a charlatan and a number of silly women.
- Marquis de Sade
27: The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.
- Thomas Paine
28: The Christian god can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.
- Thomas Jefferson
29. Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.
- Dave Barry
30. Man is the measure of all things.
- Protagoras
31. All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost.
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
- J.R.R. Tolkien
Back to main page
