Quote collection
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"Those who are determined to be 'offended' will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt."
"Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it."
"To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'"
"No, nothing is sacred. And even if there were to be something called sacred, we mere primates wouldn't be able to decide which book or which idol or which city was the truly holy one. Thus, the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression, because if that goes, then so do all other claims of right as well."
"The teachings of Christianity - from vicarious redemption to the love of enemies, no thought for the morrow need be taken, that no thrift or care or family or society or solidarity is necessary - these are immoral teachings that have done and continue to inflict untold moral and physical harm on our species. And until we outgrow this nonsense, we have no chance of emancipating ourselves."
"A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by their parents for inherited deformities that were attributed to sins in a previous 'life."
"The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right."
"Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations."
"Your favorite virtue? An appreciation for irony."
"There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise."
"I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book."
"In my life, the only certainty is to be uncertain. I'm an unbeliever who believes in skepticism. I'm only sure about being unsure."
"All of life is a wager"
"We have millions and millions of North Korean children totally stunted in mind and body and will have to be dealt with at some point, who have been raised to believe that they live in a regime that is run by a god."
"Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife."
"The moment of near despair is quite often the moment that precedes courage."
"I personally want to "do" death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me."
"Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard-or try to turn back-the measureable advances that we have made."
"No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis."
"No one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant."