Miscellaneous QuotesFebruary 2010If I were God I'd tell people to quit praying to me and stop trying to please me; I can take care of myself. I'd tell people to take care of themselves and to help their neighbors. Quit worrying about me. --Rolf Kay A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. --Albert Einstein January 2010It's a good time to say "Oh" and take stock and say "Gee, how was I ethically this year?" That's the problem with faith. What it does is it kind of screws up your priorities. Your priorities shouldn't be saving your ass, which is the focus of Christianity. The focus should be, I'm a good person, and I do that just for the sake of being good. Like the Christmas song says, "Be good for goodness sake." --Bill Maher If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going? --Bumper Sticker February 2009Evolution is Just a Theory. So is Gravity --Bumper Sticker December 2008Morality is doing what is right no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told no matter what is right. --Bumper Sticker August 2008It is true that liberty is precious, but is it so precious it must be rationed? --Anonymous It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it. Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus --Thomas Jefferson July 2008One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal; it has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious of the facts. --Bill Moyers April 2008Faith: Not wanting to know what is true. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche The Government Accountability Office reported in October that more than 755,000 names now appear on the US terrorist watch list. And the Department of Homeland Security (sic) has been secretly testing a pilot scheme here in New York in which firefighters are trained to identify suspicious material or behavior when they enter houses. --From the January edition of Pique February 2008A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking. --Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science by rendering them my supreme delight. --Thomas Jefferson January 2008Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. --George Bernard Shaw December 2007You have noticed that the human being is a curiosity. In times past he has had (and worn out and flung away) hundreds and hundreds of religions; today he has hundreds and hundreds of religions, and launches not fewer than three new ones every year. I could enlarge on that number and still be within the facts. --Mark Twain My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.. --Abraham Lincoln November 2007Why is humanism not the preeminent belief of humankind? --Joyce Carol Oates October 2007Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against the most monstrous absurdities, and like a ship without a rudder is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck. --Thomas Jefferson September 2007A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work. --Reagan Diaries August 2007I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by religious men who are certain they represent the Divine will. I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that if it be 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 June 2007Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! --Mark Twain May 2007The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. --Arthur C. Clarke April 2007Any book worth banning is a book worth reading There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere. --Isaac Asimov March 2007Humanism provides both a rich tradition for valuing and evaluating human nature, and a means for deliberating and decision making in the absence of certainty. Humanism's progenitors were Greek rhetoricians who set themselves apart from the philosophers of the time by championing the role of education in preparing humans from self-government. Education trains us to reason. --Faith Lagay It's an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations with all their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous. --Gloria Steinem We cannot always oblige, but we can always speak obligingly. --Voltaire We are atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. --Richard Dawkins February 2007A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain--then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system? --Robert A. Heinlein December 2006Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. --Ludwig Feuerbach November 2006Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us: like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be cultivated. Humanism is itself a religion without God—not all religions, of course, are theistic. Our ethical secular ideal has it s own disciplines of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more conventional religions. --Karen Armstrong Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder’s than any other agency in the world. --Richard Le Gallienne It has often and confidently been asserted that man's origin can never be known; but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge; it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. --Charles Darwin It is true that liberty is precious, but is it so precious it must be rationed? October 2006We are not simply intellectual creatures. We wish to make love, to enjoy a gourmet dinner, to jog in the park, to cheer lustily at a ball game, to engage in spirited conversation with our friends, to play bridge or tennis, travel to exotic places, struggle with others to build a better world, and to enjoy the arts. The arts are so vital because they help to make life worth living. Music, poetry, literature, paintings, dance, and the theater are among our richest joys...The fine arts contribute immeasurably to the good life and that is why we cherish them. --Paul Kurtz Perhaps the most pernicious message of creationist is this: If only we deny it, evolution will go away. If enough people are convinced, nature will follow suit. This kind of message should send shivers down the spine of anybody interested in honest, objective inquiry. Science discovers the principles upon which the universe operates, it doesn't construct them, and it's not free to ignore them. Nobody, scientists included, has the ability to legislate how the natural world operates based on religious or political belief. One cannot simply insist that the emperor is wearing a fine set of clothes and expect it to be true. We cannot substitute how we would like the world to be for how it actually is. --Professor Barry A. Palevitz Any belief worth having must survive doubt September 2006Humanism is not materialism which is mechanistic, while humanism is organic; not positivism which worships humanity, while humanism holds that humanity is an abstraction having no concrete counterpart in objective reality; not rationalism which worships reason dogmatically, while humanism depends on intelligence and experience and trusts even them only experimentally; and not atheism which is a denial of God, while humanism takes a position of inquiry. --William F. Shultz August 2006Fear believes--courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays--courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism--courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils, and in ghosts. Fear is religion, courage is science. --Robert G. Ingersoll It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it. Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus. --Thomas Jefferson to W. Short, 1820 July 2006A mind is like a parachute--it only works when it's open ...... If you want to live in a country run by religion, MOVE TO IRAN! June 2006I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. --Bertrand Russell Is god willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god? --Epicurus (341-270 BCE) May 2006In a humanist culture, we'd be more pragmatic, making public policy decisions based on the evidence rather than ideology. --Earl Wunderli February 2006Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Its round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies--: God damn it, you've got to be kind. --Eliot Rosewater December 2005I 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 parishioners 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. --John F. Kennedy Intelligent Design? - September 2005Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. --Sir Francis Bacon Strive to be the person that your dog believes you are. --Bumper Sticker of the Month August 2005The problem with intelligent design theory is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable: Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet--a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's curriculum. --George F. Will No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. --Barbara Ehrenreich July 2005If you don't have a sense of humor, you probably don't have any sense at all. --Anonymous Miracles It has been said that a miracle is the result of causes with which we are unacquainted. Once these causes are discovered we no longer have a miracle, but natural law...In a way, all dislike the laws of nature. We should prefer to make things happen in the more direct way in which savage people imagine them to happen, through our own invocation. --Robert Parrish June 2005Republican Wisdom of Yesterday Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid. --President Dwight D. Eisenhower April 2005Stardust I would like to suggest that the history of science is the history of an enlarging understanding of the universe, its evolution, its history, and its structure. We have engaged the universe at the very limits of our capacity. We have explored the world of the microcosm and the world of the macrocosm. We have found at both extremes incredible complexity. The universe, beginning from an unimaginably hot and dense singularity, evolved through a series of stages, each producing the condition necessary for the succeeding stage. Our sun, our solar system, our planet, our own beings are all late stages of this evolving universe. The insights of cosmology and theoretical astronomy have served to tie us ever more tightly into the emerging story of the universe itself. The history of the universe is our history. We emerged from the same vast processes that created galaxies and suns and stars and planets. We are all of us recycled stardust. Condensed from "Toward a Humanist Vocabulary of Reverence" published in Religious Humanism, vol.xxxv 2001 --David E. Bumbaugh January 2005Consumerism is an infectious disease that causes its victims to buy recklessly. --Flo Wineriter A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake. --Thomas Jefferson December 2004Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad --James Madison Freethinking is thinking for yourself, unconstrained by deference to tradition or authority. Slave thinking is thinking what someone else tells you to think, uncritically. We (Free)think, therefore we are (free) --John B. Hodges November 2004To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. --Theodore Roosevelt September 2004We cannot waste time simply arguing with true believers. We have a higher duty to set forth where all can appreciate them the ethics we embrace based on the recognition that there is but one human family. We call for the right of all to personal safety, security, personal liberty, privacy, universal health care, equal protection under the law, democratic participation in the formation of laws and all other universal concerns that provide dignity, meaning and purpose in living. --Gerald A. Larue August 2004The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. --Robert B. Reich Of course the people do not want war. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. --Herman Goering July 2004God knows, I'm not the thing I should be, --Robert Burns (1759-1796) Ron Reagan, son of former President Ronald Reagan, was interviewed on Larry King Live on June 23rd. King asked Reagan if he thought that President George W. Bush wears his religion on his sleeve. Reagan replied, "Well, you know, there was that answer he gave to the question about, 'Did you talk to your father about going into Iraq?' "'No, I talked to a higher father, you know, the almighty.' When you hear somebody justifying a war by citing the almighty, God. "I get a little worried, frankly. The other guys do that a lot. Osama bin Laden is always talking about Allah, what Allah wants, that he's on his side. I think that's uncomfortable." --Ron Reagan June 2004I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. --Charles Darwin As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy. --Christopher Dawson When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist, or an idealist; a Christian, or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"--had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion. --Thomas Henry Huxley May 2004The humanist enterprise (small h) is an individual one, about accepting full responsibility for one's existence and behavior as a part of the natural world--a position that involves liberating oneself from dependence upon others for finding a positive purpose in life. The Humanist enterprise (capital H) is to encourage and assist as many folks as possible to make this transition to maturity in their lives. --Don Page The only difference between a Religious Humanist and a Secular Humanist is what they do on Sunday. --Fred Edwords March 2004I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. --Carl Sagan February 2004The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion. --Thomas Paine Devote yourself to wisdom, self-knowledge, friends, family, and give some attention to community, money, politics, and pleasure. Know that none of it brings happiness all that consistently. It's best to keep an open mind...In a funny way; the one thing you can really count on is doubt. Expect change. Accept death. Enjoy life. As Marcus Aurelius explained, the brains that got you through the troubles you have had so far will get you through any troubles yet to come. --Jennifer Michael Heckt December 2004Humanist philosophies have arisen separately in many different cultures over many thousands of years. Today, this non-religious approach to life is shared by a significant portion of society. Whether or not they use the term humanism, tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of people around the world agree with the humanist philosophy of living a happy and productive life based on reason and compassion. --Institute for Humanist Studies September 2004As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. --Justice William O. Douglas, Fundamentals of Extremism - Summer 2003After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody to practice it. --Pat Robertson The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution. --Edward O. Wilson A party member is supposed to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. --George Orwell in 1984 I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. --Kurt Vonnegut New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. --Kurt Vonnegut Humanism and Its Aspirations - May 2003The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. --Kahlil Gibran
--G. Donald Gale Americans are the best entertained and the least informed people in the world. --Neil Postman War - April 2003The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war. --Ralph Waldo Emerson Never has there been a good war or a bad peace. --Benjamin Franklin I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. --George McGovern Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. --Ernest Hemingway Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent. --Isaac Asimov In all things it is better to hope than to despair. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Intolerance - March 2003"Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that there are some people in this world who I can't ever communicate with, and so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us." --Fred Rogers "Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth." --Thomas Jefferson "The American ideal is not that we all agree with each other, or even like each other, every minute of the day. It is rather that we will respect each other's rights, especially the right to be different, and that, at the end of the day, we will understand that we are one people, one country, and one community, and that our well-being is inextricably bound up with the well-being of each and every one of our fellow citizens." --C. Everett Koop "I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess-and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society, the open society. Who gave us permission to live this way? Nobody did. We did. And that's the way it should be-only more so. The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy." --Edward Abbey "The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions.... We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic." --Senator Barry M. Goldwater "The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own." --Eric Hoffer "If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other's throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace." --Voltaire Let Them Live - February 2003So, apparently, if you are a pre-sentient mass of cells, this country will protect you and your rights to the n-th degree. If you have made the mistake of becoming an Iraqi citizen, apparently we can just drop bombs on you with impunity. --Janeane Garofalo Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved through understanding. --Albert Einstein Pantoptica - January 2003Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it...There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment...You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. --George Orwell in 1984 The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads Scientia Est Potentia--"knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. --William Safire The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized. --The Fourth Amendment The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. --Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace On Earth - December 2002The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse. It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice--that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt--are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others. --Eric Hoffer What You Can Do - November 2002I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can still do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. --Edward Everett Hale There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action...and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future. --Noam Chomsky It's coming to America first, --Leonard Cohen Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. --Frederick Douglass CEDAW: Mixing Religion & Politics - October 2002If atheism is a religion, then "bald" is a hair color. --Unknown If you pray hard enough, you can make water run uphill. How hard? Why, hard enough to make water run uphill, of course! --Robert A. Heinlein I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. --George Carlin Just what are the teachings of Christ? Did he come to bring peace or more war? He says both. Did he approve earthly monarchies or rebel against them? He says both. Did he ever--think of it, God himself, taking on human form to help the earth--did he ever suggest sanitation, which would have saved millions from plagues? And you can't say his failure there was because he was too lofty to consider mere sickness. On the contrary, he was awfully interested in it, always healing someone--providing they flattered his vanity enough! What did he teach? One place in the Sermon on the Mount he advises "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven," and then five minutes later he's saying, "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven." That's an absolute contradiction, in the one document which is the charter of the whole Christian Church. Oh, I know you can reconcile them. That's the whole aim of the ministerial training: to teach us to reconcile contradictions by saying that one of them doesn't mean what it means--and it's always a good stunt to throw in "You'd understand it if you'd only read it in the original Greek!" My objection to the church isn't that the preachers are cruel, hypocritical, actually wicked, though some of them are that, too--think of how many are arrested for selling fake stock, for seducing 14-year-old girls in orphanages under their care, for arson, for murder. An it isn't so much that the church is in bondage to Big Business and doctrines as laid down by millionaires--though a lot of churches are that, too. My chief objection is that 99% of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly dull Sinclair Lewis The Road to War - September 2002"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. "War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. "In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the meaning of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." --James Madison Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it. --Mark Twain "There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. It's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly." --Kurt Vonnegut Separation of Church & State - August 2002...we need common sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. Those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench. --President George W. Bush ...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. --Article VI, U.S. Constitution The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn. --Alvin Toffler I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. --Socrates Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. --Scott Adams First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. --Mahatma Gandhi Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundation of our democracy. --Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens How will the public react to government funding for schools that take controversial religious positions on topics that are of current popular interest--say, the conflict in the Middle East or the war on terrorism? --Supreme Court Justice David Breyer Knowledge & Education - July 2002One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. --Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.
--Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
--Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
War - June 2002The United States spends more on arms annually, $275 billion presently, than the rest of the Security Council combined. U.S. arms expenditures are approximately 25 times the gross national product of Iraq. The U.S. has in its stockpiles more nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, more aircraft, rockets and delivery systems in number and sophistication than the rest of the world combined. Included are twenty commissioned Trident II nuclear submarines any one of which could destroy Europe. --Ramsey Clark In war, truth is the first casualty. --Aeschylus, 525-456 B.C.E. The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes. --Stanley Kubrick The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. --General Omar Bradley Pre-June 2002 QuotesTerror and War: The USA in 2001 - October 2001On Sept. 10, we were a nation indifferent to or irritated by religion. On Sept. 11, that all changed. There are no atheists in foxholes, or homelands under attack. --Marianne Jennings, To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. --Richard Dawkins, When you're in this type of conflict, when you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently. --Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott There's nothing Christian about nuking Afghan civilians, nor spying on American students; just as there is nothing Muslim about hijacking planes and flying them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Yet US history has shown that, by appealing to their Christian identity, Americans will accept much that is contemptible, and confuse the ideological with the theological. With this mindset, "Hallelujah!" amounts to a war cry, and "Onward, Christian Soldiers" to a latter-day crusade. This is bad religion passed off as good. --Christina Odone WAR IS PEACE --Government slogan in George Orwell's 1984 Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street. --Woodrow Wilson The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere --William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming" When your government, employer, landlord, merchant, banker and local sports team gang up to picture, digitize and permanently record your every activity, you are placed under unprecedented control. This is not some alarmist Orwellian scenario; it is here, now, financed by $20 billion last year and $15 billion more this year of federal money appropriated out of sheer fear. By creating the means to monitor 300 million visits to the United States yearly, this administration and a supine opposition are building a system capable of identifying, tracking and spying on 300 million Americans. --William Safire By threatening war against Iran, Iraq and North Korea in his now-famous "Axis of Evil" address, the president painted himself into a corner. Either Bush now goes to war against one of these regimes, or he will be humiliated and exposed as a bellicose bluff. Let me say it again: Whoever fed Bush those lines, or did not argue against his delivering them, disserved the president. For that speech has blown our coalition against terror to smithereens. --Patrick Buchanan The government can now delve into personal and private records of individuals even if they cannot be directly connected to a terrorist or foreign government. Bank records, e-mails, library records, even the track of discount cards at grocery stores can be obtained on individuals without establishing any connection to a terrorist before a judge. According to the Los Angeles Times, Al Qaeda uses sophisticated encryption devices freely available on the Internet that cannot be cracked. So the terrorists are safe from cyber-snooping, but we're not. --Molly Ivins, 12/11/2001 This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. --Martin Luther King, Jr. "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too," pundit Ann Coulter told this month's meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference. "Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors." Appearing on Fox News a few days later, Coulter acknowledged the statement and bragged that it had been a "huge hit with the audience," an estimated 3,500 who turned out for the three-day conference in Arlington, Va., that bills itself as the nation's "premier annual gathering of conservatives." In addition to Coulter, attendees also heard luminaries such as Lynne Cheney, William Bennett and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. --Jay Bookman The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent. Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions... --Gore Vidal, The so-called "war on terrorism" is being used to mask a far grander imperial design: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein that will allow the U.S. to gain control of Iraq's huge oil reserves, which are second only to Saudi Arabia's, and secure American control of the giant Caspian Oil Basin. The new U.S. bases just happen to follow the route of the planned American pipelines that will bring Central Asia's oil and gas riches - the "new Silk Road" - south through Pakistan. --Eric Margolis In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. --Dwight David Eisenhower (1960) I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. --Abraham Lincoln Of all the communities available to us, there is not one I would want to devote myself to...except for the society of the true searchers...which has very few living members at any time. --Albert Einstein The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a god. This god is emotionally unsatisfying...It does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity. --Carl Sagan To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies... Attorney General John Ashcroft The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order. U. S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities (The Frank Church Committee), 1975 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Benjamin Franklin It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own image. Rather does he create Him in the image of his cravings and dreams--in the image of what man wants to be. God making could be part of the process by which a society realizes its aspirations: it first embodies them in the conception of a particular God, and then proceeds to imitate that God. The confidence requisite for attempting the unprecedented is most effectively generated by the fiction that in realizing the new we are imitating rather than originating. Our preoccupation with heaven can be part of an effort to find precedents for the unprecedented. Take man's most fantastic invention--God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it. --Eric Hoffer The Criteria of Emotional Maturity:
--William C. Menninger There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack. --Molly Ivins My dynamite will sooner lead to peace --Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-1896) A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!" --Stephen W. Hawking In the United States, throughout all twenty-four hours of every day of the year--year after year--we have an average of two million automobiles standing in front of red lights with their engines going, the energy for which amounts to that generated by the full of efforts of 200 million horses being completley wasted as they jump up and down going nowhere. --R. Buckminster Fuller First they came for the Jews --Pastor Niemoeller (Nazi victim) The significant problems that we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them. --Albert E. Einstein The creation is the bible of the deist. Man there reads in the handwriting of the creator himself the certainty of his existence, the immutability of his power ... All other bibles and testaments are to him forgeries. --Thomas Paine When I became convinced that the Universe is natural -- that all the ghosts and gods are myth, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bards, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. --Robert G. Ingersoll
--Epicurus, circa 300 BCE "A philosopher," said the theologian, "is like a blind man looking in a dark room for a black cat which isn't there. "Yes," replied the philosopher, "and if I were a theologian, I'd find the cat!" --Attributed to Aldous Huxley All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fear, fraud, greed, imagination and poetry. --Edgar Allen Poe The only religion that can satisfy today's ideal is a religion that will give consecration to life, and direction to human endeavor, inspire men with faith in themselves, dedicate them to high moral purpose, and give them the strength to live through their failures, and to face with high courage their supreme tragedies. --Sterling M. McMurrin We who now live are parts of a humanity that extends into the remote past, a humanity that has interacted with nature. The things in civiliation we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it. Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class or race. Such a faith has always been implicitly the common faith of mankind. It remains to make it explicit and militant. --John Dewey We cannot resolve the problems of the world by unsing the same techniques that have created them. --Albert Einstein We have never had a problem creating answers, even correct ones. Our dilemma has always being in attempting to find the right questions. --S.C. Ford Education is to learning as tour groups are to adventure. --Richard Saul Wurman, Studying in the solitude of the mountains is not equal to sitting at the cross-roads and listening to the talk of men. --S.G. Champion Or sitting at a picnic. Or listening to women. --Anne Zeilstra Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man. --Benjamin Franklin Conversation is our account of ourselves...Conversation is the vent of character as well as thoughts...It is the laboratory of the student. --Ralph Waldo Emerson Good conversation is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. --Anne Morrow Lindbergh The Science of Happiness Justice is the only worship. --Robert G. Ingersoll I am the Decisive Element "I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make a life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be we help them become what they are capable of becoming." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe In trying to instill a sense of personal responsibility in my two daughters, ages 7 and 9, I have come up with an alternative to prayers. After the covers are up and before the final kiss good night I ask them to 'say their promises': I promise to be a good person. We may then discuss briefly what they did today to fulfill some of the promises. --Dawn DeGrazio Since Hmanism as a functioning credo is so closely bound up with the methods of reason and science, plainly free speech and democracy are its very lifeblood. For reason and scientific method can flourish only in an atmosphere of civil liberties. --Corliss Lamont This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: The freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: Any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. --John Steinbeck "There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny." --Carl Sagan "It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." --Carl Sagan "A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security." --Albert Einstein "What lies behind us and what lies before are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." --Ralph Waldo Emerson "There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough." --William James The national government...will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. --Adolph Hitler Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. --Seneca, Greek Philosopher Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. --Aldous Huxley The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. --Anonymous It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere...Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. --Albert Einstein Nothing is so aggravating as calmness --Oscar Wilde Have you heard the one about the agnostic dyslexic insomniac who stayed up all night wondering if there really was a Dog? Or, What do you say when a Humanist sneezes? I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster. --Henry Thoreau The person who knows that enough is enough will always have enough. --Lao-Tsu The pebble in the brook secretly thinks itself a precious stone. --Japanese proverb. If a person would move the world, he must first move himself. --Socrates Patience is the companion of wisdom. --St. Augustine Perfection is attained in slow degrees; she requires the hand of time. --Voltaire Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming. --Matthew Arnold When you are crossing the desert, plant trees, for you may be coming back the same way in your old age when you will be glad of the shade. --Persian proverb Put an end once and for all to this discussion of what a good person should be, and be one. --Marcus Aurelius Who are the learned? They who practice what they know. --Mohammed We know the truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart. --Blaise Pascal Teachers open the door...you enter by yourself. --Chinese proverb One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. --Anne Morrow Lindbergh Believe nothing merely because you have been told it, or it has been traditional, or because you yourself have imagined it. Believe whatsoever you find to be conducive to the good, to benefit the welfare of others. --Buddha So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them. --Jesus Many people reach their conclusions about life like lazy school children. They copy the answers from the back of the book without troubling to work out the sum for themselves. --Kierkegaard I'm sort of fluctuating between what I used to be and what I am. --Jane Howard I do the very best I know how--the very best I can--and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. --Abraham Lincoln A hundred times every day, I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received. --Albert Einstein Having the world's best idea will do you no good unless you act on it. People who want milk shouldn't sit on a stool in the middle of a field in hopes that a cow will back up to them. --Curtis Grant I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else. --Winston Churchill) There is nothing permanent except change --Heraclitus (circa 500 BCE) An atmosphere of freedom and tolerance is essential to assure the opportunities for human happiness. As an enlightened hedonist, my philosophy of life is not confined to publications or monthly lectures. I live it out each day and each moment...listening to a piece of music, reading an article on genetics and behavior, sharing a joke with a friend, relishing a meal, solving a puzzle, helping a neighbor. The light of reason and wisdom is but one part of the hedonic gospel, along with the flowers of beauty and the nectar of devotion; nor are they hidden beneath a basket but placed upon a table for all to see and approach with celebration. --Eric Merrill Budd Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. --Thomas Henry Huxley I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who is for or against it. I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole. --Malcom X Sign on a subway wall: "Life is one contradiction after another."
"When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last I came to the conclusion that I was neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis" - had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble...So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as a suggestively antithetic to the "Gnostic" of church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant..." --Thomas Henry Huxley A new philosophy, a way of life, is not given for nothing. It has to be paid dearly for and only acquired with much patience and great effort. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky We live two lives. The one we learn with, and the one we live with after that. --Bernard Malamud For the person and for the species love is the form of behavior having the highest survival value. --Ashley Montagu I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. --Thomas Jefferson I have a great respect for the flag, (but) if the government passed a law saying that I had to pledge allegiance to the flag, I don't think I would do it. I've always felt that I lived in a country...where if I wanted to worship God as a Baptist, I could do so. If I were an atheist, I could be one. If I wanted to be a Catholic but was born a Jew, there's no condemnation...from a government authority. --Jimmy Carter A humanist has four leading characteristics-curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race. --E. M. Forster (1879-1970) Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear. --William Gladstone Anxieties about ourselves endure. If our proper study is indeed the study of humankind, then it has seemed-and still seems-to many that the study is dangerous. Perhaps we shall find out that we were not what we took ourselves to be. But if the historical development of science has indeed sometimes pricked our vanity, it has not plunged us into an abyss of immorality. Arguably, it has liberated us from misconceptions, and thereby aided us in our moral progress. The theory of evolution explains to us what our ancestry has been. It does not explain away our worth. Why should we be afraid to learn more about what we are? --Philip Kitcher Money can buy a fine dog but it is kindness that makes him wag his tail. Scientific education and religious education are incompatible. The clergy have ceased to interfere with education at the advanced state, but they still control that of the children. This means that children will have to learn about Adam and Noah instead of about evolution, about David killing Goliath instead of Koch killing cholera, about Christ's ascent into heaven instead of Montgolfier's and Wright's. Worse than that they are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them prey to quacks of every kind and makes it difficult for them to accept the methods of thought that are successful in science. --JB Haldane It is not the "courage to be" that we must develop as much as the "courage to become." We are responsible for our destiny. The meaning of life is not located in some hidden crevice in the womb of nature but is created by free persons, who are aware that they are responsible for their own futures and have the courage to take this project into their own hands. --Paul Kurtz There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely. ---Bertrand Russell The death of dogma is the birth of reason. --Immanuel Kant Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction, consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith. We need believing people. ---Adolph Hitler It Happened My spell checker suggested jingoism as a replacement for Gingrich. From the dictionary: jingoism (jîng¹go-îz´em) noun Extreme nationalism characterized especially by a belligerent foreign policy; chauvinistic patriotism. I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, "Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like Him." The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that THAT was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven! The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way. --Mark Twain The fundamental fact about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priests had said, "Thus far and no farther. We set the limits on thought." The Greek said, "All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought." The question is whether the god of nature will govern the world by his own laws or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles. --President John Adams Blasphemy is what an old dogma screams at a new truth. --Robert Ingersoll Is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be. If nonviolence is to be the law of our being, the future is with women. --Mohandes Gandhi In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one, directly affects all indirectly. --Martin Luther King Jr. Belief is harder to shake than knowledge. --Adolf Hitler Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. --H.L. Mencken The first clergyman was the first sly rogue that encountered the first fool. --Voltaire As a Humanist I believe enhancing human welfare is our primary moral goal. Other goals might include minimizing suffering, making decisions that are fair, and enhancing human freedom and dignity. I think the evidence shows that these and others are universal human goals. My simple answer to where humanist ethics are grounded is they are based on reason, compassion, responsibility, and belief in the worth and dignity of each human being. I can't prove these, I just know they seem to work, have some basis in reason and science, but are ultimately a matter of faith. --Michael Werner What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. --Ralph Waldo Emerson I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. --Frederick Douglass, escaped slave I have never united myself to any church because I found difficulty in giving my assent without mental reservation to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize the articles of belief and the usual confession of faith. --Abraham Lincoln I do not believe in the creed of the Roman Church, in the Protestant Church, the Greek Church, or the Turkish Church. My own mind is my church. --Thomas Paine I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose. --Clarence Darrow It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. --Sherlock Holmes Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience... All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95% of Americans are "scientifically illiterate." That's...the same fraction...of slaves who were illiterate before the Civil War... --Carl Sagan Illegal immigrants have been a problem in America for hundreds of years...Just ask any Indian. --Peter Jennings The main doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are enemies of God. --Andrew White In the affairs of this world, men are saved, not by faith but the lack of it. --Benjamin Franklin Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered. --Stephen Jay Gould To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. ---Isaac Asimov Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. --Carl Sagan Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition --Edward O. Wilson If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure. --Edward O. Wilson A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. --Saul Bellow New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. --John Locke Friendship is different from all other relationships. Unlike acquaintanceship, it is based on love. Unlike lovers and married couples, it is free of jealousy. Unlike children and parents, it knows neither criticism nor resentment. Friendship has no status in law. Business partnerships are based on contract. So is marriage. Parents are bound by the law, as are children. But friendship is freely entered into, freely given, and freely exercised. Friends never cheat on each other, or take advantage, or lie. Friends do not spy on one another, yet they have no secrets. Friends glory in each other's successes and are downcast by the failures. Friends minister to each other, nurse each other. Friends give to each other, worry about each other, stand always ready to help. Perfect friendship is rarely achieved, but at its height it is an ecstasy. --Stephen E. Ambrose Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings, will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries. --Carl Sagan, Cosmos What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour? --Ralph Waldo Emerson When religion is good, it will support itself. And when it is not, and God does not care to support it, and its professors call for the help of a civil power, 'tis a sign of its being a bad one. --Benjamin Franklin When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. --Declaration of Independence Whatever good you would do out of fear of punishment, or hope of reward hereafter, the Atheist would do simply because it is good; and being so, he would receive the far surer and more certain reward, springing from well-doing, which would constitute his pleasure, and promote his happiness. --Ernestine L. Rose It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon that book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of humans. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity --Marvin Engle The recipe for perpetual ignorance is very simple: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge. --Elbert Hubbard I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own-a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble minds harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature. --Albert Einstein Zeal without knowledge is fire without light. --Thomas Fuller So of cheerfulness, or a good temper-the more it is spent, the more it remains. --Ralph Waldo Emerson Do not wrong or hate your neighbor, for it is not he that you wrong, but yourself. --Pima Indian Saying The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice. --George Eliot We should be as water, which is lower than all things yet stronger even than the rocks. --Oglala Sioux saying As humanists we come together because we share a common experience and standpoint of rejecting supernaturalism and creating an alternative philosophy of life. We share a common struggle to protect our rights and standing as nonbelievers and to get a fair hearing for what we really represent. Through our association we work together for the views and values we share. --Humanists News and Views, April 1998 While it is generally agreed that Humanism sees no ultimate purpose in the cosmic process, humanity creates for itself many specific goals that serve as bases for the justification of life; there is then no need to predicate a future life to justify the present one. --Humanists of North Jersey Newsletter, June 1997 "[Humanism is] an overemphasis on human worth and ability, leading man to glorify himself instead of God...While its historical forms may vary, humanism inevitably leads people away from God and spiritual concerns. It promotes the false idea that man is good and that he is superior to God. Secular Humanism of the twentieth century altogether rejects belief in God and worships man as God. The pride of humanism will not go unpunished." --David Fisher in World History for Christian Schools "They were apes only yesterday." "Give them time." "Once an ape-always an ape." "No, it will be different...Come back here in an age or so and you shall see..." --The gods, discussing the Earth, in the motion picure version of H. G. Wells The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936) You must live your life from beginning to end; no one else can do it for you. --Hopi Indian Saying There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women. --Robert Ingersoll Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. --Thomas Jefferson One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, its remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license. --P. J. O'Rourke What should it matter that one bowl is dark and the other pale, if each is a good design and serves its purpose well? --Hopi Indian saying Throughout our world the cry of the poor so often goes unheard. The prophets harangued Israel and Judah unceasingly about the powerless and marginalized, the overlooked widows, orphans, and "sojourners in our midst," who are still with us today as single mothers, hungry children, and helpless immigrants, wraiths invisible in our prosperous societies. Throughout the world, half of all children go to bed hungry each night and one in seven of God's children is facing starvation. Before such statistics, believers should never forget Dostoevsky's assertion that the suffering of children is the greatest proof against the existence of God; for without justice, there is no God. --Thomas Cahill Texas Wisdom: If you find yourself in a hole: stop digging! One should always keep an open mind, but not so open that one's brains fall out. --Bertrand Russell I am convinced that some activities of the Catholic organizations are dangerous. I mention here the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation has become a serious threat to health and to any attempt to organize peace on the planet. --Albert Einstein God is a hypothesis constructed by man to help him understand what existence is all about. The god hypothesis asserts the existence of some sort of supernatural personal or superpersonal being, exerting some kind of purposeful power over the universe and its destiny. To say that God is ultimate reality is just semantic cheating, as well as being so vague as to become effectively meaningless. --Julian Huxley "It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain." --Mark Twain "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 In May of 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, who was on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence: "I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good-will to Men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over Wives. But you must remember that Arbitrary power is, like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken-and we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence, throw both your natural and legal authority at your feet." --As printed in "Eyes of the Nation" page 60 I have the right to do my own thinking. I am going to do it. I have never met any minister that I thought had brain enough to think for himself and for me too. I do my own. I have no reverence for barbarism, no matter how ancient it may be, and no reverence for the savagery of the Old Testament; no reverence for the malice of the New. And let me tell you here tonight that the Old Testament is a thousand times better than the New. The Old Testament threatened no vengeance beyond the grave. God was satisfied when his enemy was dead. It was reserved for the New Testament-it was reserved for universal benevolence-to rend the veil between time and eternity and fix the horrified gaze of man upon the abyss of hell. The New Testament is just as much worse than the Old, as hell is worse than sleep. And yet it is the fashion to say that the Old Testament is bad and that the New Testament is good. "I have no reverence for any book that teaches a doctrine contrary to my reason; no reverence for any book that teaches a doctrine contrary to my heart; and, no matter how old it is, no matter how many have believed it, no matter how many have died on account of it, no matter how many live for it, I have no reverence for that book, and I am glad of it. --Robert Ingersoll "Who does not see that the same authority that can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects?" --James Madison "Blasphemy is what an old dogma screams at a new truth." --Robert Ingersoll "The intelligent and good man holds in his affections the good and true of every land-the boundaries of countries are not the limitations of his sympathies. Caring nothing for race, or color, he loves those who speak other languages and worship other gods. Between him and those who suffer, there is no impassable gulf. He salutes the world, and extends the hand of friendship to the human race. He does not bow before a provincial and patriotic god-one who protects his tribe or nation, and abhors the rest of mankind." --Robert Ingersoll |
|
|