I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Saviour; I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, but that there could be no one. I would even say more: If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.
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
'Battle of the Baltic', st. 2, on the Battle of Copenhagen (1801)
One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.
I must say that anyone who moved through those years [World War II] without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey must have been blind or wrong in the head.
William GoldingBritish novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate1911 - 1993
But I'll tell you what hermits realise. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.
Alan WattsBritish American author and lecturer1915 - 1973
...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.
Richard DawkinsEnglish ethologist, evolutionary biologist and authorborn 1941
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.
A poem about his match with George Foreman, known as the Rumble in the Jungle (1974)
But once you have a belief system everything that comes in either gets ignored if it doesn't fit the belief system or get distorted enough so that it can fit into the belief system. You gotta be continually revising your map of the world.
Robert Anton WilsonAmerican author, futurist, and agnostic mystic1932 - 2007
Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing:
What a little thing
To remember for years—
To remember with tears!