Pray

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

-- Emo Philips (7 February 1956-), American comedian

Live A Good Life

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

-- Marcus Aurelius (121-180), philosopher and writer

Turkey

TURKEY, n. A large bird whose flesh when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Incidentally, it is pretty good eating.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

A Dizzy Ride

To sum up: 1) The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2) Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3) Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.

-- H. L. Mencken, twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, "Coda" from Smart Set, December 1920

Single Mold

Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque.

-- U.G. Krishnamurti (9 July 1918 - 22 March 2007), speaker and philosopher, Mind is a Myth (1987)

Respect His Theory

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

-- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), writer, editor, and critic, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Too Profound

I feel most deeply that this whole question of Creation is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton! Let each man hope and believe what he can.

-- Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 - 19 April 1882), British naturalist, London Illustrated News, 21 April 1862

Only God Who Appointed Me

Only God who appointed me will remove me -- not the [opposition party] MDC, not the British. ... We will never allow an event like an election reverse our independence, our sovereignty, our sweat, and all that we fought for, all that our comrades died fighting for.

-- Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, in power since 1980, regarding his presidential run-off vs. MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai

RIP George Carlin

I love and treasure individuals as I meet them; I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

-- George Carlin (12 May 1937 - 22 June 2008), Grammy-winning American stand-up comedian, actor, and author, "Ready or Not, Here Comes Another Book", Georgecarlin.com, 2007-01-19

Ridiculous

Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.

-- Sam Harris, author (1967- )

No Place For Doubt

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

-- Jose Bergamin, author (1895-1983)

Sane And Happy

Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.

-- Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917 - 19 March 2008), British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, "3001: The Final Odyssey" (1997)

Voice Of Protest

The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press, and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.

-- Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), American writer, editor, and educator

To Set A Limit

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.

-- Bertolt Brecht (10 Feb 1898 - 14 Aug 1956), German socialist dramatist, stage director, and poet, in "Science"

I Disbelieve

I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

-- William James

God's Standards

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.

-- Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, as reported January 15 on MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

Lemmings

There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

-- P. J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores (1991)

Ready Booted And Spurred

I never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.

-- Walt Whitman, American poet (1819-1892)

My Own Funeral

I feel like I've been attending my own funeral, listening to all these speeches.

-- Billy Graham, at the dedication of a library honoring his ministry, May 31, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/01/us/01graham.html?th&emc=th

He Who Learns Must Suffer

He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despite, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

-- Aeschylus

As I Interpret Them

His message of peace and reconciliation under almost all circumstances is simply incompatible with Christian teachings as I interpret them. This "turn the other cheek" business is all well and good but it's not what Jesus fought and died for. What we need to do is take the battle to the Muslim heathens and do unto them before they do unto us.

-- Jerry Falwell (11 August 1933 - 15 May 2007) American pastor and conservative activist, on Jimmy Carter in a radio interview, 4 March 2002

Falwell At His Best

And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, an the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen."

-- Jerry Falwell (11 August 1933 - 15 May 2007) American pastor, and conservative activist, in remarks to Pat Robertson after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, on The 700 Club, September 13, 2001

Guarantee Of Religious Pluralism

The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.

-- Christopher Hitchens

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

The only proof he needed
For the existence of God
Was music.

-- Kurt Vonnegut (1922-11-11 - 2007-04-11), Vonnegut's Blues For America, 07 January, 2006 Sunday Herald

We Are Both Atheists

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

-- usenet .sig

God's OS?

We don't know the OS that God uses, but the Vatican uses Linux.

-- Sister Judith Zoebelein, the Vactican's webmaster

Godfather Of Soul

Thank God for the journey.

-- James Brown, The Godfather of Soul, May 3, 1933(?) - December 25, 2006

Anything But Live For It

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it, anything but live for it.

-- Charles Caleb Cotton

Price Of Freedom

The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.

-- Robert Jackson

Astronomies Change

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.

-- Harry Emerson Fosdick, preacher and author (1878-1969)

Test Of A Good Religion

It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.

-- British author G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

Information Progression

void -> noise -> signal -> data -> information -> knowledge -> wisdom -> enlightenment -> nirvana

The right side is religion, and the left is physics.

-- Chuck Fuller

Tolerance

The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principal of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.

-- Helen Keller