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| Collection of Quotes Joseph Campbell - Mythologist and Author
It takes courage to do what you want. We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement , but the real deep, life-filling bliss. "Mythology" is what we call someone else's religion. When you see the Earth from space, you don't see any divisions of nation-states there. This may be the symbol of the new mythology to come; this is the country we will celebrate, and these are the people we are one with.
Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and this alone, I am a deeply religious man. It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion will be based on experience, which refuses dogmatism. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism... Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. The trite objects of human efforts possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate these things! Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research. No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional "opium of the people"—cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims. One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have. Make everything as simple as possible but not simpler. The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Isaac Newton
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy. If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent. I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.
Carl Sagan - Astronomer and Author
A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent. We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate the connections of things from subnuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and thence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world. Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage, at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. We succeeded
in taking that picture [of Earth from the distant Voyager spacecraft],
and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home.
That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being
who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our
joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies
and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero
and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every
king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful
child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer,
every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar,
every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history
of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in
a sunbeam. I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism. Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. Such [supernatural] reports persist and proliferate because they sell. And they sell, I think, because there are so many of us who want so badly to be jolted out of our humdrum lives, to rekindle that sense of wonder we remember from childhood, and also, for a few of the stories, to be able, really and truly, to believe--in Someone older, smarter, and wiser who is looking out for us. Faith is clearly not enough for many people. They crave hard evidence, scientific proof. They long for the scientific seal of approval, but are unwilling to put up with the rigorous standards of evidence that impart credibility to that seal. We [scientists] are prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established [scientific] beliefs. The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity. In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion. You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves. The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation. [Dr. Arroway in Carl Sagan's Contact ] In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course, ask next: where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed? In a democracy, opinions that upset everyone are sometimes exactly what we need. We should be teaching our children the scientific method and the Bill of Rights. Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our own ignorance about ourselves.
Galileo Galilei
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them to not see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover. I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; 'That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes. Philosophy is written in this grand book - I mean the universe - which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it
Richard P. Feynman
... there are many reasons why you might not understand [an explanation of a scientific theory] ... Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen anymore. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it. It's a problem that [scientists] have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. [A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd.
Neil Degrasse Tyson
The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone to act on their “low contracted prejudices.” And that would be the last gasp of human enlightenment—until the rise of a visionary new culture that could once again embrace the cosmic perspective. A single breathful draws in more air molecules than there are breathfuls of air in Earth's entire atmosphere. That means some of the air you just breathed passed through the lungs of Napoleon, Beethoven, Lincoln, and Billy the Kid. Want to know what we're made of? Again, the cosmic perspective offers a bigger answer than you might expect. The chemical elements of the universe are forged in the fires of high-mass stars that end their lives in stupendous explosions, enriching their host galaxies with the chemical arsenal of life as we know it. The result? The four most common chemically active elements in the universe—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen—are the four most common elements of life on Earth. We are not simply in the universe. The universe is in us. But don't come knocking on my door telling me that you've got a belief system that will get me closer to the workings of nature because, unless you're a scientist, you're not telling me the truth. Consider an adult who tends to the traumas of a child: a broken toy, a scraped knee, a schoolyard bully. Adults know that kids have no clue what constitutes a genuine problem, because inexperience greatly limits their childhood perspective. As grown-ups, dare we admit to ourselves that we, too, have a collective immaturity of view? Dare we admit that our thoughts and behaviors spring from a belief that the world revolves around us? Apparently not. And the evidence abounds. Part the curtains of society's racial, ethnic, religious, national, and cultural conflicts, and you find the human ego turning the knobs and pulling the levers.
J. Bronowski It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. Dissent is the mark of freedom. Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime. Man is unique not because he does science, and he is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind. I set out to show that there exists single creative activity, which is displayed alike in the arts and in the sciences. It is wrong to think of science as a mechanical record of facts, and it is wrong to think of the arts as remote and private fancies. What makes each human, what makes them universal, is the stamp of the creative mind. These are the moments when the powerful mind or the forceful character feels the ferment of the times, when his thoughts quicken, and when he can inject into the uncertainties of others the creative ideas which will strengthen them with purpose. At such a moment the man who can direct others, in thought or in action, can remake the world. It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods. [The acquisition of] Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
Alan Dressler When I talk to audiences about the size and age of the cosmos, people often say, "It makes me feel so insignificant." I answer, "The bigger and more impersonal the universe is, the more meaningful you are, because this vast, impersonal place needs something significant to fill it up." We've abandoned the old belief that humanity is at the physical center of the universe but more come back to believing we are at the center of meaning.
Gerald Massey - Egyptologist They must find it difficult... Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority.
Lord Byron There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar. I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
John Muir When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
Francis Bacon Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.
John James Ingalls In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.
Edward Teller A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
John Dewey Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
John Moffat Physics is imagination in a straight jacket.
Jean Rostand Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.
Evelyn Fox Keller To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.
Martin H. Fischer The great men of science are supreme artists.
Paul Dirac - Physicist In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
Robert K. Merton Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.
George Wald It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
Frank Lloyd Wright I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights.... Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion. The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills. In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God. Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
Thomas Paine
You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death. If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately. Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes. One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Ben Franklin
A democracy is two wolves and a small lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Freedom under a constitutional republic is a well armed lamb contesting the vote. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the Power of Man over Matter...Agriculture may diminish its Labour and double its Produce; all Diseases may, by sure means, be prevented or cured, not even excepting that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard. O that moral Science were in as fair a way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and that human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity. I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies. The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason. It has been for some time a generally receiv’d Opinion, that a military Man is not to enquire whether a War be just or unjust; he is to execute his Orders. All Princes who are dispos’d to become Tyrants must probably approve of this Opinion, and be willing to establish it. But is it not a dangerous one? since, on that Principle, if the Tyrant commands his Army to attack and destroy, not only an unoffending Neighbour Nation, but even his own Subjects, the Army is bound to obey. A Negro Slave in our Colonies, being commanded by his Master to rob or murder a Neighbour, or do any other immoral Act, may refuse, and the Magistrate will protect him in his Refusal. The Slavery then of a Soldier is worse than that of a Negro!
Abraham Lincoln
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts. I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends. I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them. The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
Marcus Aurelius Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
Democritus Men should strive to think much and know little. Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity. It is godlike ever to think on something beautiful and on something new.
Sara Teasdale Life has loveliness to sell, all beautiful and splendid things, blue waves whitened on a cliff, soaring fire that sways and sings, and children's faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup.
Mark Twain
Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste. The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him. In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. My land, the power of training! Of influence! Of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything. Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes, and wishes he was certain. The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next. But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most? We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and even then we are never sure of him--how much higher and finer is the Indian's God......Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact; the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge. ...what sorry shows and shadows we are. Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams. At our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but only candles; and any bummer can blow us out. It is better to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain. So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code. If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. It mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him. Nobody deserves to be helped who don't try to help himself, and "faith without works" is a risky doctrine. ...one should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the chosen of God. How insignificant we are, with our pigmy little world!-- an atom glinting with uncounted myriads of other atom worlds in a broad shaft of light streaming from God's countenance--and yet prating complacently of our speck as the Great World, and regarding the other specks as pretty trifles made to steer our schooners by and inspire the reveries of "puppy" lovers. Did Christ live 33 years in each of the millions and millions of worlds that hold their majestic courses above our heads? Or was our small globe the favored one of all? Does one apple in a vast orchard think as much of itself as we do? or one leaf in the forest--or one grain of sand upon the sea shore? Do the pismires argue upon vexed questions of pismire theology--and do they climb a molehill and look abroad over the grand universe of an acre of ground and say "Great is God, who created all things for Us?"
Leonardo da Vinci
As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. Human subtelty will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous. Walt Whitman I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Henry David Thoreau If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. Sam Harris - Author
Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith. There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life. According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency. We do not respect stupidity in this society unless it is religious stupidity. There is a related claim that atheists and scientists generally are arrogant. This is rather ironic. The truth is that when scientists don't know something like how the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed on Earth they tend to admit it. Pretending to know things you do not know is a profound liability in science. You get punished for this rather quickly. But pretending to know things you do not know is the lifeblood of faith-based religion. This is really one of the profound ironies of religious discourse, the frequency with which you can hear religious people praise themselves for their humility while tacitly claiming to know things about cosmology and physics and chemistry and paleontology that no scientist knows. Any person who dignifies genesis as an account of creation or even as informative is essentially saying to someone like Stephen Hawking, "Stephen, you're a smart guy, and I see you've got a lot of equations over there but you don't know enough about cosmology. It says here that God did this in six days and rested on the seventh, and I don't see how you've really grappled with the nuances of the biblical account." This would be amusing if it were not having such a disasterous effect upon our public policy. It is impeding medical research and the teaching of science in this country. 30% of biology teachers in the United States at the high school level don't even mention evolution because of the hassle occasioned by the religious hysteria it provokes in their students and their student's parents. The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive. Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time. It is the denial—at once full of hope and full of fear—of the vastitude of human ignorance.
Richard Dawkins - Biologist and Author
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. Was Carl Sagan a religious man? He was so much more. He left behind the petty, parochial, medieval world of the conventionally religious; left the theologians, priests and mullahs wallowing in their small-minded spiritual poverty. He left them behind, because he had so much more to be religious about. They have their Bronze Age myths, medieval superstitions and childish wishful thinking. He had the universe.The creationists fondness for gaps in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You dont know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You dont understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please dont go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, dont work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Dont squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Out of all of the sects in the world, we notice an uncanny coincidence: the overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one that their parents belong to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained glass, the best music: when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing, compared to the matter of heredity. This is an unmistakable fact; nobody could seriously deny it. Yet people with full knowledge of the arbitrary nature of this heredity, somehow manage to go on believing in their religion, often with such fanaticism that they are prepared to murder people who follow a different one. There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile, and its guidance system is in many respects superior to the most sophisticated electronic brain that money can buy. Yet to a cynical government, organisation, or priesthood, it is very very cheap. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much of a furore Richard creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be. It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say, “Enough!” Let our tribute to the September (11th) dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe. The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Religion fuels both. All violent enmities in the world today fuel their tanks at this holy gas-station. Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different after September 11th. Let’s stop being so damned respectful! We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
Michael Shermer What can be more soul shaking than peering through a 100-inch telescope at a distant galaxy, holding a 100-million-year-old fossil or a 500,000-year-old stone tool in one's hand, standing before the immense chasm of space and time that is the Grand Canyon, or listening to a scientist who gazed upon the face of the universe's creation and did not blink? ..a world absent monsters, ghosts, demons, and gods unfetters the mind to soar to new heights, to think unthinkable thoughts, to imagine the unimaginable, to contemplate infinity and eternity knowing that no one is looking back. The universe takes on a whole new meaning when you know that your place in it was not foreordained, that it was not designed for us, indeed, that it was not designed at all. If we are nothing more than star stuff, how special life becomes. How inspiring it is to share in the sublimity of knowledge generated by other human minds, and perhaps to even make a tiny contribution toward that body of knowledge that will be passed down through the ages, part of the cumulative wisdom of a single species on a tiny planet orbiting an ordinary star on the remote edge of a not-so-unusual galaxy, itself a member of a cluster of galaxies millions of light years from nowhere. For me, the Hubble Telescope Deep Field photograph WFPC2, revealing as never before the rich density of galaxies in our neck of the universe ... is as grand a statement about the sacred as any medieval cathedral.
Stephen Colbert
The greatest thing about this man [George W. Bush] is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Now I know there's some polls out there saying this man [George W. Bush] has a 32-percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking 'in reality.' And reality has a well-known liberal bias. I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Muslim, or Jewish. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior. I'm disappointed that my own Catholic Church has decided that capital punishment is wrong. Which is pretty hypocritical if you think about it, because they wouldn't even have a religion if it wasn't for capital punishment. If you non-Catholic Christians are upset, well, just have your Pope issue a reponse. Oh, that's right, you don't have a Pope because your faith is defective. Sorry, Catholicism is clearly superior. Don't believe me? Name one Protestant denomination that could afford a $660 million sexual abuse settlement. I think that the Lord has spoken on this one. When I decided to run for president, I did not do it for the attention. I did it to fulfill a dream, of being the most popular man in the world. I've always been a big fan of beauty. Sure, you can't judge a book by its cover but who wants to have sex with a book?
Jon Stewart
Religion - a source of comfort and strength in a world torn apart by religion. 1300 BC: God gives Ten Commandments to Israelites, making them His Chosen People and granting them eternal protection under Divine Law. Nothing bad ever happens to Jews again. The show in general we feel like is a privilege. Even the idea that we can sit in the back of the country and make wise cracks... which is really what we do. We sit in the back and throw spitballs--but never forgetting that it is a luxury in this country that allows us to do that. That is, a country that allows for open satire, and I know that sounds basic and it sounds like it goes without saying. But that’s really what this whole situation is about. It’s the difference between closed and open. The difference between free and... burdened. And we don’t take that for granted here, by any stretch of the imagination. You
have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail
miserably.
Bill Maher - Comedian
If the Bush era has taught us anything, it's that voters want a president carved from their own image, someone who doesn't like to read, will believe anything he's told, and is easily distracted by bright shiny objects. I'm not an atheist. There's a really big difference between an atheist and someone who just doesn't believe in religion. Religion to me is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need. But I'm not an atheist, no. I believe there's some force. If you want to call it God... I don't believe God is a single parent who writes books. I think that the people who think God wrote a book called The Bible are just childish. Religion is so childish. What they're fighting about in the Middle East, it's so childish. These myths, these silly little stories that they believe in fundamentally, that they take over this little space in Jerusalem where one guy flew up to heaven ...no, no, this guy performed a sacrifice here a thousand million years ago. It's like, "Who cares? What does that have to do with spirituality, where you're really trying to get, as a human being and as a soul moving in the universe?" I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child. It certainly was drilled into mine at that age. And you really can't be responsible when you are a kid for what adults put into your head." When people say to me, 'You hate America,' I don't hate America. I love America. I am just embarrassed that it has been taken over by people like evangelicals, by people who do not believe in science and rationality. It is the 21st century. And I will tell you, my friend. The future does not belong to the evangelicals. The future does not belong to religion. Do you think if it was the fairy tale about a man who lived inside of a whale and it was religion that Jack built a beanstalk today, you would know the difference? Why do you believe in one fairy tale and not the other? Just because adults told you it was true and they scared you into believing it, at pain of death, at pain of burning in hell. And
that's the Church's attitude: 'We're here, we're queer, get
used to it,' which is fine, far be it from me to criticize religion.
But just remember one thing: If the Pope was -- instead of a
religious figure -- merely the CEO of a nationwide chain of
day care centers, where thousands of employees had been caught
molesting kids and then covering it up, he'd be arrested faster
than you can say 'who wants to touch Mr. Wiggle?'
Henry Van Dyke Use what talent you possess - the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.
Vincent Van Gogh When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.
Kahlil Gibran Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Ambrose Bierce Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Wendell Berry To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.
Jacques Cousteau What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.
Charles Lindbergh How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?
Samuel Butler A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
John Burroughs To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life. Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral. I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
Alexander Pope Hope
springs eternal in the human breast;
William Shakespeare One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!
Isaac Asimov - Science Fiction Author I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time. Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Arthur C. Clarke - Science Fiction Author "It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him." "Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.
Ray Bradbury - Science Fiction Author Touch a scientist and you touch a child.
James A. Baldwin I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
John Adams I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
Pablo Casals The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
Bertrand Russell
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. "Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." "I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting." The task of asking nonliving matter to speak and the responsibility for interpreting its reply is that of physics. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
Guy de Maupassant Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
H. L. Mencken We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. ...[This] convention protects them, and so they proceed with their blather unwhipped and almost unmolested, to the great damage of common sense and common decency. that they should have this immunity is an outrage. There is nothing in religious ideas, as a class, to lift them above other ideas. On the contrary, they are always dubious and often quite silly. Nor is there any visible intellectual dignity in theologians. Few of them know anything that is worth knowing, and not many of them are even honest. The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.
John Morley Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
George Bernard Shaw No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!
Anne Lamott You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Robert A. Heinlein Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything. One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
Judith Hayes Why is it that almost every human culture yet discovered has found it necessary to believe in an afterlife of some sort, but not a 'before-life?' Why are there so many versions of Heaven, Paradise and The Great Beyond, but almost none about The Great Before. The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example, while loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine? If we are going to teach creation science as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction.
Frederick the Great Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand.
Bill Gates Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.
Richard Burton The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
Lenny Bruce If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
Napoleon Bonaparte Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god. All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
Seneca the Younger Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
Andy Richter When you pray, I don't think anyone's listening. Besides other people, I don't think anyone cares if you murder people or masturbate or shove things up your butt. I don't think there's anybody sitting in the sky watching you. You're on your own. All you have is other people around you, and how you treat them. I actually think that not having a focus on God would make life better, because there would be more of an imperative to be nice to each other. There would be no more brand-name wars over stuff, and pointless arguments over east side/west side, go-fight-win. But I don't know. People have got to worry about something, and there's obviously some kind of anthropological, almost zoological need. This particular animal does this particular thing. Instead of constructing a hive out of paper that they chew up, they create a God. It's just something that they do.
Laurie Anderson That's what attracts me to Buddhism, because it's the only belief system in which there is no God at all. There is no big authority figure; there is no ultimate anything. You are God. And that's really terrifying. Suddenly, you realize, "Oh my God, that means I'm responsible, and there's nobody to grovel in front of, no one to blame, and no one to praise. I need to do this myself."
Jesse Ventura Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business.
Mohandas Gandhi I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.
Plato One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
Stephen King The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window.
Edward Tabash Society's elevation of people who believe in some fabricated god to the highest plateaus of power, and concomitant literal demonization of those of us who apply the rule of reason to outlandish supernatural stories, is horrendously perverse. The denigration of the free thinker is one of the most uncivilized affronts to the human intellect in our world today.
George Santayana Science is nothing but developed perception and interpreted intent -- common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
Robert McAfee Brown Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.
Russell Banks Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.
Alistair Cooke Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks.
The Movie Adaptation We are all one thing, Lieutenant. Thats what I've come to realize. Like cells in a body. Cept we cant see the body. The way fish cant see the ocean. And so we envy each other. Hurt each other. Hate each other. How silly is that? A heart cell hating a lung cell.
David Letterman Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
George Bush, Sr. No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
Mel Gibson, director of "Passion of the Christ" movie There is no salvation for those outside the [Roman Catholic] Church.
Robert Ingersoll When I became convinced that the Universe is natural - that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, of the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and naught remains.
Unknown Life is short! Break the rules! Forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, and laugh easily! If triangles had a god, it would have three sides. The only thing that all religions get right is that every other religion is pure rubbish. Conformity is the key to popularity. Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I'll show you somebody who has never achieved much. A mystic is someone who wants to understand the universe, but is too lazy to study physics. Ignorance on your part about natural processes does not imply intervention on God's part. It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning. I was a Christian for 35 years. During that time there was absolutely nothing that anyone could have said or done to turn me away from God. Nothing. I had to look away on my own. Faith is the perfect containment structure for a belief system. The keys are kept inside. Krishna’s
dictum: The best way to help mankind is through the perfection
of yourself.
Mark Twain, Huck Finn Excerpt So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter - and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of |
