Though the details differ across the world, no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth consuming, hostility provoking rituals, the anti-factual, counter-productive fantasies of religion.
Richard DawkinsEnglish ethologist, evolutionary biologist and authorborn 1941
If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.
When I speak of the importance of the scientific method in regard to the conduct of human life, I am thinking of scientific method in its mundane forms. Not that I would undervalue science as a metaphysic, but the value of science as metaphysic belongs in another sphere. It belongs with religion and art and love, with the pursuit of the beatific vision, with promethean madness that lead the greatest men to strive to become gods. Perhaps the only ultimate value of human life is to be found in this Promethean madness. But it is a value that is religious, not political, or even moral.
The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.
Robert Anton WilsonAmerican author, futurist, and agnostic mystic1932 - 2007
From 'Tempt Me No More' : Day Lewis, C. (1935). Collected poems, 1929-1933. New York: Random House.
Last night I had a dream, when I got to Africa, I had one hell of a rumble.
I had to beat Tarzan’s behind first, For claiming to be King of the Jungle.
For this fight, I’ve wrestled with alligators, I’ve tussled with a whale.
I done handcuffed lightning and throw thunder in jail.
You know I’m bad. Just last week, I murdered a rock, Injured a stone, Hospitalised a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.
I’m so fast, man, I can run through a hurricane and don't get wet.
When George Foreman meets me, he’ll pay his debt.
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree,
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali.
Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste
Used in 'Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy' (2017). With thanks to C-Lee
Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.
Emmett F. Fields
Emmett F. Fields
The only way to read a book of aphorisms without being bored is to open it at random and, having found something that interests you, close the book and meditate.
Prince De LigneHabsburg Austrian Field Marshal, writer and intellectual1735 - 1814
Gross, J. (1983). The Oxford book of aphorisms. Oxford University Press.
Gross, J. (1983). The Oxford book of aphorisms. Oxford University Press.
I’m armed with more than complete steel—The justice of my quarrel.
Unknown
Unknown
And you who wish to represent by words the form of man and all the aspects of his membrification, relinquish that idea. For the more minutely you describe the more you will confine the mind of the reader, and the more you will keep him from the knowledge of the thing described. And so it is necessary to draw and to describe.
I am satisfied and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but which I have no evidence.
Thomas JeffersonFounding Father, U.S. president from 1801 to 18091743 - 1826
But the transformation of consciousness undertaken in Taoism and Zen is more like the correction of faulty perception or the curing of a disease. It is not an acquisitive process of learning more and more facts or greater and greater skills, but rather an unlearning of wrong habits and opinions. As Lao-tzu said, ‘The scholar gains every day, but the Taoist loses every day.’
Alan WattsBritish American author and lecturer1915 - 1973
Watts, A. (1962). The Joyous Cosmology. [New York]: Pantheon Books.