My Favorite Quotes
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
– Theodosius Dobzhansky
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
– Niels Bohr
If the Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare.
– Unnamed contemporary of Darwin (quoted by Andrew Dickson White, 1896)
Gun control is hitting your target repeatedly.
– seen on a bumper sticker
Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen.
– Bob Edwards
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
– Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one.
– Albert Einstein
If the human brain was so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.
– Emerson M. Pugh
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
– Galileo Galilei
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in
another.
– Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I feel sorry for the earth's population / Because so few live in the USA
– Greg Graffin, "American Jesus"
To teach is to learn twice.
– Joseph Joubert
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
– Albert Schweitzer
It seems absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist.
– Charles Darwin
If one holds to the view of a supernatural being, is it more elevating to think of that being as a grand architect who set the whole thing in motion with divine plan of operation and then let it alone, or to think of her or him as the whimsical builder pictured by a literal interpretation of Genesis?
– Preson Cloud
To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
– Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Heaven and Earth, Centre and substance were made in the same instant of time and clouds full of water and man were created by the Trinity on the 26th of October 4004 B.C., at 9:00 in the Morning.
– Archbishop James Ussher (1664)
Jesus: The man who mows my lawn. \'Jesus, you missed a spot.\'
– UrbanDictionary.com
There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
–
Mark Twain
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
– Wilson Mizner
We're for the [political] center, baby! The problem is, the center doesn't give as much of a sh*t as the crazies.
– John Stewart, The Daily Show, 13 April 2005
Lord, help me to be the person my dog thinks I am.
– seen on a bumper sticker
About 40% of active science teachers believe that 'there are sufficient problems with the theory of evolution to cast doubts upon its validity.'
– Eve and Dunn, 1990
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
– Epictetus (55-135 AD)
[Loss of faith] is the inevitable result of a dogma that asks people to believe impossible things and then makes them feel abject and guilty when their innate reason rebels.
– Christopher Hitchens, Newsweek
Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
– A Course in Miracles
To make Christianity sensible would be to make the absurd something less than it is. ... The most outrageous thing ever said about Christianity is that it is, to some degree, true.
– Jon J. Johnson (my college philosophy prof)
My mother says to get a job / But she don't like the one she's got
– Green Day, "Longview"
There's someone in my head, but it's not me.
– Pink Floyd, "Dark Side of the Moon"
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
– John Shedd
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
– Voltaire
There is no logical path leading to [the highly universal laws of science]. They can only be reached by intuition, based upon something like an intellectual love of the objects of experience.
– Albert Einstein
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
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
– Will Durant
Although the Creationists may be irrational, they are not to be dismissed as a lunatic fringe that can best be treated by being ignored.
– Preson Cloud, 1977
My karma ran over my dogma.
– seen on a bumper sticker
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
– Bertrand Russell
I don't need to be a global citizen / because I'm blessed by nationality
– Greg Graffin, "American Jesus"
No science requires the force of law to fight for it. If creationism were really science, it would stand or fall on the merits of its theories and research.
– Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial, 1982
The living are conscious that they will die, but the dead are
conscious of nothing at all.
– Ecclesiastes 9:5
Fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis.
– Pope John Paul II, 1996
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
– Bertrand Russell
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
– sign in teacher's lounge
If I had to choose I would prefer to be the descendant of a humble monkey rather than of a man who employs his knowledge and eloquence in misrepresenting those who are wearing out their lives in the search for truth.
– Thomas Henry Huxley
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
– Robert Frost
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Christians don't go to church! Men of society go to church; athiests go to church; Baptists go to church!
– Jon J. Johnson (my college philosophy prof)
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
– Blaise Pascal
Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of interests.
– Ambrose Bierce
Everone wants to know what I'm on. What am I on?! I'm on my bike six hours a day busting my ass! What are you on?
– Lance Armstrong
If you have your head up your ass, four of your five senses aren't working.
– Nelson DeMille, The General's Daughter
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
– Robert Anton Wilson
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
–
Albert Einstein
There are two ways to live your life--one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.
– Albert Einstein
Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
– George Carlin
A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment.
– Willis Player
Just as we do not discard Newtonian or Einsteinian gravity because we do not have measurements of the mutual attractions between every particle in the universe, so the general evolutionary progression is clear, even though fossil remains are not found for every creature that ever lived.
– Preston Cloud
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
– Hermann Hesse
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made.
– Oscar Wilde
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
– seen on a bumper sticker
How much did you pay for your black leather jacket? / Is it you or your parents in this income tax bracket?
– Cake, "Rock-n-Roll Lifestyle"
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. ... The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
– Frederick Douglass
Television is a medium of expression which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
– T. S. Eliot
[Evolution] is as much a scientific fact as the atomic constitution of matter or the revolution of the earth around the sun.
– Douglas Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
– Steven Weinberg
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is
blind.
– Albert Einstein
I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.
– Yann Martel, Life of Pi
In this land of competition the compassion is gone / yet we ignore the needy and we keep pushing on
– Greg Graffin, "Punk Rock Song"
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'
– Charlie Brown
JESUS SAVES...He Passes It To Gretzky...Gretzky Shoots...He Scores!
– seen on a bumper sticker
God: a towering source of comfort for those beset by tragedies...tragedies wrought by acts of God.
– John Stewart, The Daily Show, 9 March 2005
A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
– Granville Hicks
Did you exchange / a walk-on part in the war / for the lead role in a cage?
– Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"