SAYINGS
* Hell to a religious bigot is another bigot of a different religion
* End-of-the-world prophets cannot be wrong;
they can only be premature
* If a quote is sufficiently pithy,
it becomes a kind of poetry
* There is not a shred of evidence.
The evidence has all been shredded.
* Disbelief in conspiracies is a helpful service
those who engage in conspiracies.
* Normality is the insanity to which we have become accustomed.
* Modesty is a way of bragging about how humble you are.
* A friend should never count his friends in the manner
that a miser counts his coins
Friends are not shiny objects to increase one's status,
or to hoard possessively from others.
* Lying does not necessarily imply a lack of sincerity.
Many people come to believe their own lies very passionately.
* If you pound a belief into people's heads, hard enough,
you can make them believe that they actually believe it.
Hell, that's nothing. If you pound a belief into people's
heads, long enough, hard enough, you can make them believe
that they thought of it first, all by themselves.
* Your faith is not being tested. It is being contradicted.
* The only thing worse than an ignorant bigot is an educated bigot.
(someone who has a PhD in bigotry, and can explain to you in
great detail the philosophical basis and historical context
for his bigotry)
* Do not investigate conspiracies. Engage in them.
Then the know-it-alls who disbelieve in conspiracies
will be working for your benefit, to keep you from
being discovered.
* Democracy is a form of government based on the assumption
that million bastards will not be nearly so much of a bastard
as any one, individual bastard, among them.
* We have a much better system in America;
we freely elect our dictators
* A democracy of tyrants is still a tyrant.
* Faith is a virtue only if that belief in which you have faith
actually happens to be true
* Faith does not measure the strength of your beliefs.
It measures the weakness of your mind.
* Sincere bigots are so much more appealing than the insincere ones.
I am always so glad when someone casts unfair aspersions on
your kind, but they don't really mean a word of it.
* Religious bigotry is still bigotry. It is the most pernicious
kind of bigotry, precisely because its adherents are so
convinced of their good intent.
* Freedom of speech is uplifting only if someone
manages to say something uplifting.
Freedom of religion is uplifting only if someone
manages to believe something that is uplifting
* The Rights of Man are beautiful things.
They exist only in the eye of the beholder.
* Perhaps human infants are not really any more
innocent than baby sharks. Innocence should not be
confused with incompleteness or lack of opportunity.
Whatever damns us, damns us in our seed.
* The phrase "innocent human being" is perhaps
an oxymoron.
* The phrase "religious scholar" is an oxymoron.
It is like having a PhD in astrology or tea-leaf reading.
* The pretense of civilization, the outward appearance,
the false veneer of civilization IS civilization.
The things that we do only because we believe
that we are expected to do them; the things that we profess
to believe or feel only because we think that we are
expected to believe and feel them; when we pretend
to be kind to people toward whom we secretly feel
very unkind - that is civilization.
* As it is here on earth, so too must be in Heaven
for they have the same Creator
* Christianity is hijacked Judaism.
* Religion is organized neuroticism
* Happy atheists are like happy hookers.
They are only happy because they have not yet
discovered how bad is the pension system.
* For most people, by the time that you take the collection
of things that they dare not believe, and the collection
of things that they feel obligated to believe,
the Truth has already been pretty much gutted.
* Before trying to determine why a fact is true,
first try to determine if it is truly a fact.
* A half-truth is generally a thing far more pernicious
than a complete lie
* If I wanted to tell a lie, I assure you that I could
concoct a much better-sounding lie than to have to
tell you the ridiculous-sounding truth.
* Machismo is the second greatest human illusion, after religion
* terrorist \'ter or ist\ n: the smaller army with the less effective
public relations and less professional propaganda mill
* The greatest Truths are all blasphemies.
* Youth is when you worry about losing your hair because
of male pattern baldness. Old age is when you worry about
losing your hair because of chemotherapy.
* I do not envy youth. There is no such thing as youth.
Only naive, young people are deluded, otherwise.
However, the duration of their delusion is too brief
to be of significance.
* Aging is one of God's many sins against us.
* Don't throw away your life, if you have one,
but don't keep clinging to your life, if you don't have one.
* The only thing sadder than a motherless child
is a childless mother
* They will tease you for being bald, but they will tease you for
wearing a wig. They will tease you for coloring your hair,
but will tease you for being gray. You cannot win other than for
the impossibility of immortal youth, so just say to hell with them.
* When people say, "I am only kidding!", they probably are not.
* The debate was over a long time ago, but the quarreling continues.
Ideologues do not need honest debate. It is more like a filibuster
technique. They seem to feel that so long as they never stop
talking, they cannot have lost the argument.
* People who complain the loudest about abortion
are the same people who should have been aborted
* Someone needs to save the world from all the people
who want to save the world
* The fact that a judgement is wrong in retrospect
does not mean that it was not the right judgement
for the time and circumstances in which it had been made.
* I do believe in Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.
It is everybody else that I don't believe in.
* There is too much senseless violence in the world.
What we need is more violence that makes sense.
* Too much violence in the world? Maybe there hasn't
been nearly enough violence. There are still human beings
left. Solving one problem would solve the other.
* I do believe in non-violence. Absolutely not one bullet
more than what is necessary.
* It is meaningless to aspire to be a lawful citizen
when you are living under a lawless government
* My philosophy is an absolutely terrible philosophy.
The only thing that I can even think to say in its defense
is that it is the truth.
* Human beings almost invariably opt for comforting
falsehood over harsh reality. Most human beings are
willing assistants to their own propagandizing.
* What we call "religion" should be called by its
rightful name - "speculation". Speculation should be
classified among our most tentative of beliefs,
not our most self-certain.
* Excessive certainty of belief can represent delusion.
However, there is nothing delusional about speculation,
so long as the boundary is respected between
speculation and fact.
* Shakespeare is revered in large part because so few
people can really understand what he is saying.
His real messages have sometimes promoted moral
relativism, endorsed violence and murder, and
justified suicide.
Bless him for being unfathomable to the smaller minds
of moralists.
* Poetry should no more be the exclusive province of
famous names, than chess should played only by grandmasters.
It is for everyone.
* Religion preaches humility, then instills the arrogant
notion that we can possess absolute truth.
Religion preaches truth, then weaves a world of fairy-tales
and superstition.
Religion preaches love, then instills hatred of heretics
and infidels.
Religion preaches peace, and is a powerful instigation to war.
* Religion is not the peer or the brother to Science.
It is the crazy uncle that needs to be kept locked
in the attic.
* I cannot think of a better use for my dying breath
than to whisper a blasphemous obscenity in the ear
of the priest who wants to "save" me, after all that
his kind has done to mine.
* The human mind, in attempting to understand its world,
is a case of the inadequate, trying to comprehend
the unknowable and unprovable.
It is a nice grain of humility, to realize that we
could conceivably get it wrong.
* True morality is about different people being able
to live together in harmony, without destroying each other-
The very thing of which moralists tend to be least capable.
* Of course I know the difference between right and wrong.
They have no intrinsic difference.
Right and wrong are human artifacts, a category
of human opinion, equivalent to "I like modern art"
or "I do not like modern art."
* I feel that profanity degrades the public discourse.
However, we live in a world so profane that verbal expression
loses it accuracy, if not dressed in appropriate obscenity.
* Sometimes a pithy statement is just a pissy statement
with a lisp.
* A quotable quote is still a quotable quote,
even if no one ever quotes it. You can quote me on that.
* "Things exist for the whimsical
reason that there is nothing to
prevent them from existing."
* Creation occurs at the intersection of
randomness and infinity
* Everything happens. An unimaginably small probability
of something happening does not prevent it from happening.
It *guarantees* that it will happen. It will only happen
an unimaginably small part of the time, but will
happen all the same. Every possible outcome is permanently
enshrined in a tiny corner of a Tree of Infinity.
The magic trick of Creation involves Nature pursuing
every possible path.
* Randomness is too fine of an art to leave to the sloppy
forces of nature. True randomness must be crafted
carefully, in the loving hands of a mathematician.
* Living with a known risk is rarely so dangerous
as living with an illusion of safety
* There is hardly such a thing as "unnatural".
If something exists in the real world, it is
by definition "natural".
* People who like to make noise about "unnatural"
things are often the same ones who are believers
in things "supernatural".
If something exists, then it is by definition
part of Nature, not something more than Nature,
and therefore not "supernatural".
* I would be perfectly happy to let bygones be bygones
-if they were gone. It is difficult to let them
be gone, when they are still here.
* Part of a good revenge is denying your opponent
an opportunity to take revenge on you, in his
retaliation for your revenge on him.
* If you don't want to live under the constant threats
of dangerous enemies, then try not to make so many
dangerous enemies.
* No matter how serious you might try to be,
you cannot escape the absurdity. Just because
you don't believe in existentialism, does not mean
that it is not an apt description of your existence.
* You cannot escape existential hell, simply because
you refuse to believe in it.
* Friendship makes terrible liars of us. Life puts us
in the bind that we cannot both speak the truths that
matter and make pleasant conversation.
* Truth and Justice, first. Peace and Love, second.
* Self-certainty tends to exist in direct proportion
to wrong-headedness
* A good spy is precisely someone who does not look,
or act, or seem in any way like a spy.
* Wisest is he who makes up new "old Chinese sayings"
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POET'S POSTSCRIPT
I think that a prejudice exists, a notion that no one
should try to compose sayings, as if this would be
be like awarding yourself a medal. The feeling is that
you are supposed to say something innocently and
unself-consciously, then be validated by someone quoting it:
only then it becomes a quote.
That seems like a very bad attitude. There is a certain appeal
to one-and-two line expressions. as natural as singing songs
or reading/writing poems.
It would be a horrible if everyone had a notion that
no one in the world should sing, because that would be
putting on airs, as if you were a virtuoso. If you are not
ready for Carnegie Hall, then you should not sing in the shower.
Who do you think you are?
I wonder if the Modesty Police would object to singing
the "Happy Birthday" song at a small, private gathering?
To hell with that. I enjoy collecting other people's quotes,
of all kinds, and enjoy trying to coin new ones.
It is like a coin collection or personal photo album-
you pull it out, every now and then, enjoy the memories,
and put it back. You would think that nearly everyone
would do it.
Another nice thing about it is that a collection like this
can become a living document, never really finished,
to which you make additions and improvements over time.
Like watching a tree grow. If you have ever planted one,
it is a satisfying thing. I recommend it for anyone that hasn't
done so, yet, not to mention the improvement to your
carbon footprint.
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