To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him.
Henry James 1843 - 1916
1843 - 1916
Entire Collection
God is not dead but alive and working on a much less ambitious project.
Graffito : Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Graffito : Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
Winston Churchill 1874 - 1965
1874 - 1965
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.
1880 - 1956
H. L. Mencken on Religion
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou 1928 - 2014
1928 - 2014
You will have written exceptionally well if, by skilful arrangement of your words, you have made an ordinary one seem original.
Horace 65 - 8 BC
65 - 8 BC
A normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is ‘weak,’ ‘sinful’ and anxious for a ‘good time.’ Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life.
George Orwell 1903 - 1950
1903 - 1950
If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?
1934 - 1996
The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)
When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.
Vincent van Gogh 1853 - 1890
1853 - 1890
The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.
1857 - 1924
‘Under Western Eyes’ Oxford dictionary of quotations
In every age and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, of the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
Edward Gibbon 1737 - 1794
1737 - 1794
It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.
John von Neumann 1903 - 1957
1903 - 1957
It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.
H. L. Mencken 1880 - 1956
1880 - 1956
I never write when I'm drunk. Why should one need aids? The Muse is a high-spirited girl who doesn't like to be brutally or coarsely wooed. And she doesn't like slavish devotion — then she lies.
W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973
1907 - 1973
To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.
E. M. Forster 1879 - 1970
1879 - 1970
There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.
born 1941
The God Delusion
Avada Kedavra!
born 1965
Voldemort's last words : Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
M. Scott Peck 1936 - 2005
1936 - 2005
The rules of the game Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go.
Emanuel Lasker 1868 - 1941
1868 - 1941
Life is more fun if you play games.
1916 - 1990
My Uncle Oswald
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
J. Robert Oppenheimer 1904 - 1967
Commenting on his involvement in the Manhatten Project during World War II. : Referencing the Bhagavad Gita, verse 32 chapter 11.
1904 - 1967
Commenting on his involvement in the Manhatten Project during World War II. : Referencing the Bhagavad Gita, verse 32 chapter 11.
The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know; our knowledge of our ignorance. For this indeed, is the main source of our ignorance - the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
Karl Popper 1902 - 1994
1902 - 1994
Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off.
A former editor of New Scientist Magazine, who is as yet unidentified (possibly Jeremy Webb)
A former editor of New Scientist Magazine, who is as yet unidentified (possibly Jeremy Webb)
In my view, the realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening. If you can do that, you have already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life.
Sam Harris born 1967
Harris, S. (2014). Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Bantam Press.
born 1967
Harris, S. (2014). Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Bantam Press.
I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime would think of Nazi Germany. … I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the Wizarding world. So you have to the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is a great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves on nothing else, they can pride themselves on perceived purity. … The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.
J. K. Rowling born 1965
born 1965