"Asthma doesn't seem to bother me any more unless I'm around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar."
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Quote collection
Steve Allen quotes (page 1 of 2)
40 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations."
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"Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances."
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"One social evil for which the New Testament is clearly in part responsible is anti-Semitism."
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"Thousands of years ago only Christ could walk on the water. Today anybody can do it; you just step on the garbage."
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"Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized."
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"Without laughter life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter to us that humanity highly rewards members of one of the most unusual professions on earth, those who make a living by inducing laughter in others. This is very strange if you stop to think of it: that otherwise sane and responsible citizens should devote their professional energies to causing others to make sharp, explosive barking-like exhalations."
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"In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders."
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"Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless."
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"Religious believers of the world, you are free to continue to debate the simple, narrow question that divides you from atheists, but you have no right, in so doing, to treat the Humanists of the world with contempt. You owe them a deep debt of gratitude, for not only have they shed much light on a naturally dark world but they have very probably helped civilize your own specific religion."
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"Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous ideas are likely to have destructive consequences."
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"There is scarcely a page of the Bible on which an open mind does not perceive a contradiction, an unlikely story, an obvious error, an historical impossibility of one sort or another."
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"If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow."
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"Millions of Germans had absolute faith in Hitler. Millions of Russians had faith in Stalin. Millions of Chinese had faith in Mao. Billions have had faith in imaginary gods."
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"The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy - and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational"
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"I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions—and should be vigorously opposed."
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"Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality."
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"Civilization itself . . . can easily be swept aside when mob passions are aroused."
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"The Bible is unfortunately unclear on a long list of moral and social questions and sex is one of them. On the one hand, there are expressions of admiration for the reportedly virgin mother of Jesus, but other portions of scripture speak quite accommodatingly of polygamy."
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"There is not the slightest question but that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous, vengeful God, inflicting not only on the sinful pagans but even on his Chosen People fire, lighting, hideous plagues and diseases, brimstone, and other curses."
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