Daily quotes

[Angrboda]

“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
― Saul Bellow

"Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity."
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

[Angrboda]

"Dogs flew spaceships! The Aztecs invented the vacation! Men and women are the same sex! Our forefathers took drugs! Your brain is not the boss!"

— Firesign Theatre, Everything You Know Is Wrong

[Cyberman]

"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realised what was telling me this."

-- Emo Philips

[Angrboda]

The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently.
The average student hears of the Tao and gives it thought now and again.
The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs aloud.
If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be what it is.
Hence it is said:
The bright path seems dim;
Going forward seems like retreat;
The easy way seems hard;
The highest Virtue seems empty;
Great purity seems sullied;
A wealth of Virtue seems inadequate;
The strength of Virtue seems frail.


— Tao Te Ching, Ch. 41, excerpt (Feng/English, trans.)

[Angrboda]

"Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff."

— Jack Handey

[Minimalist]

We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year's fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Gods" (1872)

Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "Some Mistakes of Moses"

We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins -- they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of to-day. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of to-day -- of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago.
These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars -- neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience -- and for them all, man is indebted to man.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "God In The Constitution"

[Angrboda]

"Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can."
— Thucydides

[Angrboda]

Steve Rogers: Is everything a joke to you?
Tony Stark: Funny things are.

— The Avengers (2012)

"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church."

— Ferdinand Magellan

[Minimalist]

“For seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm”

Voltaire

[Creed of Heresy]

We are growing larger. More make their way to our fortresses every day. Men and women. Young and old. From different lands. Of different faiths. Each tells a similar story – of having discovered the first part of our creed: that nothing is true.
Too often, though, the revelation undoes them. They lose their morality, certainty, security. Many are driven mad. We must guide them. Help them to heal. Their minds must not be filled with more fairy tales, but with knowledge instead. Let them have answers – and let those answers be difficult and complex. Such is life.

~Altair Ibn La'ahad

The italicized portion is that which resonates with me the most lately, as I realize how true it is bit by bit the more I think on things.