All Quotes
“It’s sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But it does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.”
“Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”
“For me, it is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
“Bet on good people doing good things.”
“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there it.”
“The 'here and now' is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The 'here and now' is all we have; An inspiration to make the most of it.”
“No one can hurt you without your consent.”
“The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.”
“I think I’ll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don’t believe in Gosh too, you’ll be darned to heck.”
“We have arranged a civilization in most crucial elements depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.”
“Be excellent to each other.”
“You see, if you say something positive like the whole of life - all living things- is descended from a single common ancestor which lived about 4,000 million years ago and that we are all cousins, well that is an exceedingly important and true thing to say and that is what I want to say. Somebody who is religious sees that as threatening and so I am represented as attacking religion, and I am forced into responding to their reaction. But you do not have to see my main purpose as attacking religion. Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading. And that is what is so exciting for me.”
“The hole and the patch should be commensurate.”
“Science! It makes things predictable.”
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
“If you're going to be miserable, you might as well enjoy it.”
“Science … looks skeptically at all claims to knowledge, old and new. It teaches not blind obedience to those in authority but to vigorous debate, and in many respects that’s the secret of its success.”
“I reject the notion that science is by its nature secretive. Its culture and ethos are, and for very good reason, collective, collaborative, and communicative.”
“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”
“Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.”
“The natural coarse of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.”
“If every fossil were magicked away, the comparative study of modern organisms, of how their patterns of resemblances, especially of their genetic sequences, are distributed among species, and of how species are distributed among continents and islands, would still demonstrate, beyond all sane doubt, that our history is evolutionary, and that all living creatures are cousins. Fossils are a bonus. A welcome bonus, to be sure, but not an essential one. It is worth remembering this when creationists go on (as they tediously do) about “gaps” in the fossil record. The fossil record could be one big gap, and the evidence for evolution would still be overwhelmingly strong. At the same time, if we had only fossils and no other evidence, the fact of evolution would again be overwhelmingly supported. As things stand, we are blessed with both.”
“Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, i supposed, is to make us feel small. But if that’s their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.”
“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 God both willing and able?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is God both willing and able?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
“First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.”
“I haven't slept for two days because I think that would be too long.”
“It's like a lifeline, songwriting ... If you let go of that lifeline, something exciting will happen. You might drown but you might swim to another bank. Soon as you say there's no song here, I have to make this music stand as music. It has to get something across without being a nice story about you and me and how I want to feel your body. You're facing very interesting musical problems and you can't avoid them. You have to somehow deal with the difficulties and I prefer that. ”
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.”
“Sincerity is the highest compliment you can pay.”
“(Religion) With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion”
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
“My religion is to do good.”
“The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight -- that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything [that] a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether.”
“There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out.”
“The church spends thousands of dollars to save a dogma, where it spends a cent to find a truth.”
“I no longer needed a reason for my existence, just a reason to live.”
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounding admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
“Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.”
“What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say ‘I know’ instead of ‘I am learning,’ and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.”
“Religious people split into three main groups when faced with science. I shall label them the “know-nothings”, the “know-alls”, and the “no-contests".”
“The objections to religion are of two sorts - intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow.”
“Anecdotal evidence has value for suggesting directions to research, but it does not by itself constitute evidence, and cannot reasonably be treated as such.”
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.”
