Posts tagged: Quotes
You only live one life
You only live one life and you make all your mistakes and learn what not to do and that’s the end of you. – Richard P. Feynman
Waiting to be known.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. – Carl Sagan
The inconceivable nature of nature
But you gotta stop and think about it … to really get the pleasure about the complexity; the inconceivable nature of nature. – Richard Feynman
Science flies you to the moon…
Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings. – Victor Stenger
Those Vikings may have had a point
Beliefnet has a short but somewhat interesting article on the variety of loony belief systems represented on their site. The article, Five Religions You’ve Never Heard Of, focuses on the core beliefs of and a few choice quotes by some of the self-proclaimed believers in Asatru, Sant Mat, Eckankar, Ahmadiyya, and Maltheism.
While I was reading, a quote by the Asatruar Beliefnet member John_T_Mainer really hit me.
I will face my challenges with a grin, accept nothing less than victory until death, and face my gods and ancestors secure in the knowledge that I made the most of the life they gave to me, and that my children and neighbors will face less danger and strife for my efforts.”
Sure, he believes in Thor and Odin and that they gave him his life but at lease he’s not wasting it. And most of his declaration speaks true to humanists, atheists, and agnostics. Live life to the fullest and make the world a better place for everyone else. Or, as I like to put it: Be excellent to each other and party on, dudes!
You really have to feel for the Maltheists though. They believe God exists. They just think he’s a total ass. Although I’m pretty sure this is just what happens when devout belief is mixed with Bible reading/study. The ones that don’t identify as Maltheists probably spend the rest of their time at church, reaffirming their belief in their wonderful and just misery-maker.
Via: Reddit:Atheism
They also laughed at Bozo the Clown
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. – Carl Sagan
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. – Richard Dawkins
Scholarly opinion
Scholarly opinion – even highly informed scholarly opinion – is not evidence. – Bart D. Ehrman
But he loves you!
Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man – living in the sky – who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time… But he loves you! – George Carlin
Too Much Time Thinking
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done. – Bruce Lee
Anecdotal Evidence
Anecdotal evidence has value for suggesting directions to research, but it does not by itself constitute evidence, and cannot reasonably be treated as such. – Brian Dunning
If We Wish To Feel Small
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. – Carl Sagan
Patriotism
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” – George Bernard Shaw
It’s A Brochure
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. – Douglas Adams
If You Say Something Positive
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. – Richard Dawkins
