“I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn’t.”
-Jules Renard (1864 – 1910)
“It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.”
-Peter De Vries, “The Mackerel Plaza,” 1958
“Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.”
-Richard Dawkins, “The Root of All Evil”, Channel 4 UK, 2006 British ethnologist, geneticist, & popularizer of genetics (1941 – )
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
-Richard Dawkins, “The Root of All Evil”, UK Channel 4, 2006 British ethologist, geneticist, & popularizer of genetics (1941 – )
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
-Voltaire French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 – 1778)
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” -Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol US artist (1928 – 1987)
“It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.”
-James Gordon, M.D.
“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”
-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations Roman Emperor, A.D. 161-180 (121 AD – 180 AD)
“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.” -Aristotle, Politics Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC – 322 BC)
“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” -George Bernard Shaw Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 – 1950)
“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”
-George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) “Maxims for Revolutionists” Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 – 1950)
“The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.”
-Gustave Flaubert French realist novelist (1821 – 1880)
“Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.”
Marquis de Flers -Robert and Arman de Caillavet
“Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.”
-Harry S Truman, Lecture at Columbia University, 28 Apr. 1959 33rd president of US (1884 – 1972)
“Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.”
-Richard M. Nixon 37th president of US (1913 – 1994)
“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
-Voltaire French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 – 1778)
“Communism is like prohibition, it’s a good idea but it won’t work.”
-Will Rogers, Weekly Articles (1981), first published 1927 US humorist & showman (1879 – 1935)
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
-Abraham Lincoln 16th president of US (1809 – 1865)
“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”
-Seneca Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC – 65 AD)
“Knowledge is power.”
-Sir Francis Bacon, Religious Meditations, Of Heresies, 1597 English author, courtier, & philosopher (1561 – 1626)
“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
-Albert Einstein, (attributed) US (German-born) physicist (1879 – 1955)
“The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”
-George Orwell, Polemic, May 1946, “Second Thoughts on James Burnham” English essayist, novelist, & satirist (1903 – 1950)
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”
-Jimmy Carter US diplomat & Democratic politician (1924 – )
“Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”
-Mao Tse-Tung Chinese Communist politician (1893 – 1976)
“It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”
-Robert E. Lee US-Confederate general (1807 – 1870)
“Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”
-Sir Winston Churchill British politician (1874 – 1965)
“The over-man…Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life’s terrors, he affirms life without resentment.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
“To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146 German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
“What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153 German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
“In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.” -Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, section 16 German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
“Morality is herd instinct in the individual.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 116 German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
“God is dead.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 108 German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn, Sec. 297 German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
“A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
-H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 – 1956)
“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”
-H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 – 1956)
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
-H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 – 1956)
“Determine never to be idle…It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”
-Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
-Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
“I cannot live without books.”
-Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
-Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
“Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.”
-Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
-Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.”
-Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
-Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
“Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”
-Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 – 1826)
“We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.”
-Robert Wilensky
“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”
-Paul Gauguin
“A cult is a religion with no political power.”
-Tom Wolfe
“There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.”
-Bertrand Russel
“We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.”
-David Russel
“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”
-H.L.Menken
“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”
-H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 – 1956)
“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
-H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 – 1956)
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
-H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 – 1956)
“Every man loves two women; the one is the creation of his imagination and the other is not yet born.”
-Kahlil Gibran Lebanese artist & poet in US (1883 – 1931)
“I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.”
-Kahlil Gibran Lebanese artist & poet in US (1883 – 1931)
“If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.”
-Kahlil Gibran Lebanese artist & poet in US (1883 – 1931)
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
-Kahlil Gibran Lebanese artist & poet in US (1883 – 1931)
“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.”
-Oscar Wilde Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 – 1900)
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
-Oscar Wilde Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 – 1900)
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
-Oscar Wilde Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 – 1900)
“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
-Oscar Wilde Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 – 1900)
“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.”
-Oscar Wilde Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 – 1900)
” Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
-Oscar Wilde Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 – 1900)
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”
-Oscar Wilde Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 – 1900)
“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”
-Willy Wonka. Inventor, chocolatier, cunning wizard & philosopher (0-0)
-Them