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Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy?
Leo Tolstoy When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense. Edward Abbey If you were taught that elves caused rain, every time it rained, you'd see the proof of elves. Ariex Every religion seems like a fantasy to outsiders, but as holy truth to those of the faith. Isaac Asimov For those who fought for it, Freedom has a taste that the protected will never know.
Conroy Family War Memorial, Batesland SD
Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business.
Jesse Ventura Make it as close to the truth as you can, the better to make it a lie.
Marius De Romanus You're obliged to pretend and respect people and instituitions you think absurb. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization that make you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy if life and all felling of personality, becuase at every moment they supress and restain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.
Octave Mirbeau There is a price to be paid for freedom... a slave has no options but a free person must choose a direction. (contributed by Sheila Mathews) Like a withered leaf are you now; Death's messengers await you. You stand on the eve of your departure. Yet you have made no provisions for your journey.
Dhammapada, Buddhist Scripture
It is fortunate for those in power that people do not think.
Adolf Hitler
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.
Dr. Viktor E. Frankl The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. H. L. Mencken Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing. George Orwell ... the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don't expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue - it's been happening every day for a long time. Marylin Manson Knowledge [is] something that has always stood in the way of religous tyranny. Mark Edmondson The origin of all science is the desire to know causes, and the origin of all false science and imposture is the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance. William Hazlitt The aim of those who try to control thought is always the same. They find one single explanation of the world, one system of thought and action that will (they believe) cover everything; and then they try to impose that on all thinking people. Gilbert Highet By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing; but instead of nonchalantly promenading our own corruption, we exude our sweat and grow winded upon the fetid air. E. M. Cioran Fear the faith that's not the shape of your soul.
Sepultura, Common Bonds
...if one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods. Lucretius One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death. Lucretius Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand. Bertrand Russell Many people have the reasoning facility, but no one uses it in religious matters. Mark Twain The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. John Maynard Keynes The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious. John Stuart Mill Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to. Howard Mumford Jones The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, remain neutral. Dante Alighieri To be born in imbecility, in the midst of pain and crisis; to be the plaything of ignorance, error, need, sickness, wickedness, and passions; to return step by step to imbecility, from the time of lisping to that of doting; to live among knaves and charlatans of all kinds; to die between one man who takes your pulse and another who troubles your head; never to know where you come from, why you come and where you are going! That is what is called the most important gift of our parents and nature. Life. Denis Diderot A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. Saul Bellow The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. John F. Kennedy Human beings never think for themselves... For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told--and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity... We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.
Michael Crichton There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad. Mark Twain Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself. Bertrand Russell You can educate yourself right out of a relationship with God. Tammy Faye Bakker The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. Adolf Hitler The Devil's strategy for our times is to trivialize human existence and isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands or economic anxieties. Philip Zimbardo Should we be obeying some old piece of paper or should we make our own decisions?
Arthur To be patriotic, hate all nations but your own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own. Lionel Strachey ... reason accepts no commandments. Ayn Rand In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; But in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue. Ethan Allen Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. Ludwig Borne People want to be at the center of the Universe...and they're going to flock to anybody who tells them that. Victor J. Stenger ... these highly exalted "linchpins," particularly in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, are nothing more than a carrot-and-stick approach to "morality." Do good or else! Goodness is not promoted for its own sake. It is promoted as a means of avoiding God's wrath and damnation. This is the antithesis of morality. You're doing something good solely because you're afraid of what might happen to you (frying in hell) if you don't. You're looking out for Number One---pure selfishness---the opposite of truly moral behavior. By contrast, those of us who don't believe there are any gods or devils snapping at our heels, do good simply because we feel compassion, and want to help. Surely this is truly moral behavior. We are seeking no spiritual rewards or brownie points for the hereafter. We just want to help.
Judith Hayes The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to rankling spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous, inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others. What have the different sects, creeds, doctrines in religion been but so many pretexts set up for men to wrangle, to quarrel, to tear one another in pieces about, like a target as a mark to shoot at?
William Hazlit Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if the world should perish twice, I think I know enough of hate, to say that for destruction, ice is also great, and would suffice. Robert Frost The path of excess leads to the tower of wisdom.
William Blake
We need not fear those who do evil in the name of evil, but Heaven protect us from those who do evil in the name of good. Arthur C. Adams No one holds command over me. No man. No god. No Prince. What is a claim of age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who defy death? Call your damnable hunt. We shall see whom I drag screaming to hell with me. Hunter S Thompson The mind is it's own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.
John Milton The bullet that will kill me has not yet been cast. Napoleon Bonaparte The only perfect circle on the human body is the eye. When a baby is born it's so perfect, but when it opens its eyes it's just blinded by the corruption and everything else is a downward spiral. Richey Edwards, Manic Street Peachers I believe that in your heart you already know something is profoundly wrong. When bartenders are responsible for drunk drivers' acts, and gunmakers are responsible for criminals' acts, and nobody is responsible for O. J. Simpson's acts, something is wrong. Charlton Heston Our minds are circumscribed by our immediate reality, but we stop short at the thought of it. Matt Berry Realist: The word means so many things to so many different people that it should never be used without the utmost care. Nevertheless, one might rashly put up the word now and then as a farmer puts up a scarecrow, in the hope that ungrounded minds might fly elsewhere. Matt Berry What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There was a hole inside his soul a manicure could not fill
He sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see,
Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor) Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient. H. L. Mencken Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety. H. L. Mencken What sort of meaning would you like [life] to have? Propose to me a meaning for life. Anything you want. Well, when people try to think of what the meaning of life is, they say 'Well, I think that we're all part of a plan, and [we're] working as if we were characters in a novel or a play, and we are all working towards a great fulfillment. One day, perhaps after we're dead, perhaps in the future life, there'll be a great gazoozie. There'll be a galuptious, glorious goodie at the end of the line, see? And that's what we're all for, see? To get in with that. And it will all be very, very important, because it won't be something trivial. It will be something extremely holy.' Well I say, 'What's your idea of something very holy?' Well, nobody really knows. You know, they think about church, and medieval artists who used to represent heaven in the form of everybody sitting in choir stalls. [It] looked insufferably dull. And when those little children sang hymns about those eternal sabbaths, it was a very depressing future, I can assure you. Alan Watts Nothing's beautiful from every point of view. Horace I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. Frederick Douglass If you don't control your mind, someone else will. John Allston Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know. Michel de Montaigne Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it. Edward Abbey We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we yearn for another that will be eternal. Anatole France The last 100 years of research into the human brain...sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like the other organs in the body...our emotions and higher callings, such as religion, as well as our grubby low-level physical systems like stereo vision and motor control, are products of a machine... Steven Pinker It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the great majority of men still believe that the universe is run by a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft and girth, who is nevertheless interested in the minutest details of the private conduct of even the meanest man. H. L. Mencken There is no other word in the human language that is as meaningless and incapable of explanation as is the word 'God.'... It is the Alpha and Omega of Ignorance. It has as many meanings as there are minds. And as each person has an opinion of what the word God ought to mean, it is a word without premise, without foundation, and without substance... It is all things to all people, and is as meaningless as it is indefinable. Joseph Lewis There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. Albert Camus To control and enslave the minds of men, all one must do is convince them that a secret exists, and that he is privy to information regarding that secret; hence the power of priests and psychics. S. A. Smith He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence. William Blake Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones. Charlotte Bronte Principles are as often as not an excuse to stop thinking about matters that are difficult because they require judgment, and, as such, principles often constitute a sort of moral cowardice. Martin Wells The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. Mohandas Gandhi I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed... I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. Franklin D. Roosevelt There are no warlike peoples -- just warlike leaders. Ralph Bunche War is at its best barbarism... Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
General William Tecumseh Sherman The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst. Harry Emerson Fosdick May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't. General George S. Patton Jr. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are the more they are frightened. The couragous man is the man who forces himself in spite of his fear to carry on. General George Patton The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars. William Westmoreland Dig a hole in your back yard while it is raining. Sit in the hole until the water climbs up around your ankles. Pour cold mud down your shirt collar. Sit there for forty-eight hours, and, so there is no danger of your dozing off, imagine that a guy is sneaking around waiting for a chance to club you on the head or set your house on fire. Get out of the hole, fill a suitcase with rocks, pick it up, put a shotgun in your other hand, and walk on the muddiest road you can find. Fall flat on your face every few minutes as you imagine big meteors streaking down to sock you. After ten or twelve miles (remember, you are still carrying the shotgun and suitcase) start sneaking through the wet brush. Imagine that somebody has booby-trapped your route with rattlesnakes which will bite you if you step on them. Give some friend a rifle and have him blast in your direction once in a while. Snoop around until you find a bull. Try to figure out a way to sneak around him without letting him see you. When he does see you, run like hell all the way back to your hole in the back yard, drop the suitcase and shotgun, and get in. If you repeat this performance every three days for several months you may begin to understand why an infantryman sometimes gets out of breath. But you still won't understand how he feels when things get tough.
Bill Mauldin My hands are small, but they're not yours, they are my own... I am never broken.
Jewel Kilcher
If God created us, and expects to worship him, we are nothing more than slaves. Alexander Watson Words mask the sincerity found in silence. Don't mistake my persistence for hesitance. Juliet Pang What I cannot create, I cannot understand.
Richard Feynman
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
James Joyce All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) Oh, what it is to live your life, when every day you fight the frost, knowing well the day will come when ice crawls up your spine, and lays you down, forever stiff, together with the cold. Malachi Ex Sanguinus Death makes angels of us all and put wings where we once had shoulders, smooth as raven's wings. Jim Morrison Democracy promotes Conformity, Conformity promotes Ignorance, Ignorance promotes Fear, and Fear promotes Hate. And they wonder why the country is at war with itself. Mark A. Stromeyer The voice of the people is the voice of God. (Vox populi vox dei.) Thank you, your honour. You have completed Mahathir's plan. We will meet again in 2014 or earlier. There has been no criminal trial in this court, only political persecution. The pronoucement of your judgement today was a mere formality, according to the preordained script of the conspirators. This judgement has no legal basis. It does not disgrace me. It disgraces you and this nation of ours. Let the plotters plot all they want, for God is still the best of schemers. Anwar Inbrahim Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them. In it they can reduce women to the status of objects. That is the great distinction between the sexes: men see objects, women see the relationship between objects. Whether the objects need each other, love each other, match each other. [...] War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships...
Conchis Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats, well here I am. Marilyn Manson On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who, at the dawn of victory, sit down to rest, and resting, died. (contributed by James) Following these faiths based on mythological figures insures the destruction of one's inner being. Organized religion destroys who we are by inhibiting our actions, by inhibiting our decisions, out of fear of some intangible parent figure who shakes a finger at us from thousands of years ago and says do it, do it, and I'll fucking spank you! Dogma |
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