There’s a small “Quote to remember …” widget in the lower right sidebar wherein a quote is randomly selected to appear each time the page loads. Below is the list of all of these quotes. They are a collection of some of the more eloquent, thought-provoking, inspiring or plain humorous quotes I’ve come across. The latest quotes are at the top.
I’ve left the comments for this page open for anyone who wants to offer a suggestion or correction. The usual blog rules apply.
01/11/18 9:11 PM ET
“It’s perfectly reasonable to judge others by standards of basic decency.”
— Laurie Penny
“Purporting to oppose fascism by allowing the state to ban views it opposes is like purporting to oppose human rights abuses by mandating the torture of all prisoners.”
— Glenn Greenwald
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”
— Robert Anton Wilson (apocryphal)
“All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.”
— Tennessee Williams
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
— Rosa Luxemburg (apocryphal)
“I sometimes fear that people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress worn by grotesques and monsters as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.
“Fascism arrives as your friend. It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you once were, clear out the venal and the corrupt, remove anything you feel is unlike you …
“It doesn’t walk in saying, ‘Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.’”
— Michael Rosen
“[City Watch Commander Samuel Vimes] distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, ‘Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,’ and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!
“It was the same with more static evidence. The footprints in the flowerbed were probably in the real world left by the window-cleaner. The scream in the night was quite likely a man getting out of bed and stepping sharply on an upturned hairbrush.
“The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints.”
— Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
“If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
— Malcolm X
“The point of satire is to comfort the afflicted by afflicting the comfortable.”
— Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury
“In humanity, there is benevolence. There is so much of it that it is automatically overlooked.
“In humanity, there is malevolence. There is so little of it that it is instantly noticed.
“For every hundred thousand kind acts, there is one single cruel act. Yet, that one cruelty shines like a dark star that overpowers the surrounding white stars, creating the illusion of a ‘balance’ that falsely convicts billions of innocents as monsters.”
— Permanent Temporary [paraphrased]
“[Anti-gay Christians] are not the Jews in Nazi Germany; they are the Neanderthals looking around in bewilderment as more evolved humans take over their territory, beating their chests and screaming ineffectually in the face of inexorable progress.”
— Kyell Gold
“Your right to religious freedom ends when it affects people outside of your sect. Your right to worship as you see fit does not include the right to be kowtowed to, the right to make other people live by your rules, or even the right not to be offended. Put on your big-boy pants and deal with it.”
— arensb
“There is a fundamental difference between being discriminated against because of who you are and how you choose to live your life, and being ‘discriminated against’ because of how you believe other people should choose to live their lives. The first case has been shown time and time again to be generally not the way we choose to do things here in America (with some exceptions). The second case is a pathetic whining of people who are perfectly free to live their lives the way they want, but will not be happy unless they can stop other people from being happy. They are co-opting the language of civil rights in an effort to make themselves appear like victims. Don’t buy it, not for a second.”
— Kyell Gold
“Beyond the universe there is nothing and within the universe the supernatural does not and cannot exist. Of all deceivers who have plagued mankind, none are so deeply ruinous to human happiness as those impostors who pretend to lead by a light above nature. Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teachings, and most of these teachings have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas, and most of these dogmas have been false.”
— George P. Spencer, epitaph
“I have a problem with religion or anything that says, ‘We have all the answers,’ because there’s no such thing as ‘the answers’. We’re complex. We change our minds on issues all the time. Religion leaves no room for human complexity.”
— Daniel Radcliffe
“Two theologians debating the nature of a deity are like two Star Wars fanboys debating the nature of The Force.”
— Diaphanus
“If you have a bible on your bookshelf, you may be a Christian. If you have a Koran on your bookshelf, you may be a Muslim. If you have a Torah on your bookshelf, you may be Jewish. If you have all three, you are probably an atheist.”
— Blonde Nonbeliever
“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”
— Stephen Hawking
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
— Marcus Aurelius
“Homosexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is found in only one. Which one seems unnatural now?”
— Chad Aldridge, Facebook
“‘New Atheism’/‘New Atheist’ refers to atheists speaking their minds, writing books and blog posts, wearing T-shirts and putting stickers on their cars and generally being exactly as open and vocal as Christians are in the US. So, of course, we're “rude”, “shrill”, “angry”, “bitter” awful people who need to shut the fuck up and leave the talking to the Christians. Cuz, you know, privilege.”
— PersonalFailure
“It's a strange situation where the political party with more ex-wives than candidates […] is regarded as the protector of the sanctity of the family.”
— PZ Myers
“A Christian has to be Adolf Hitler to be called militant. All an atheist has to do is write a book.”
— Tommy Holland, Tommy Holland’s Vision
“Reality is a harsh mistress. She demands our honesty. She demands our work. She demands that we give up comforts, that we let ourselves feel pain, that we accept how small we are and how little control we have over our lives. And she demands that we make her our top priority.
But she is more beautiful, and more powerful, and more surprising, and more fascinating, and more endlessly rewarding, than anything we could ever make up about her.”
— Greta Christina, Alternet
“Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity …. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.”
— Robin Browne (via Andrew Futral)
“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”
— George Bernard Shaw
“Let’s drop the whole ‘atheist evangelism’ thing and call out bullshit questions like ‘what does atheism have to offer?’ for just what they are: Bullshit. I mean, what does knowing that the Earth goes around the Sun have to offer? Who cares? It just is.”
— Rebecca Watson, Skepchick
“Sure, science arose out of Catholicism…in the same sense that plumbing, sanitation systems, and public health policies arose out of sewage.”
— PZ Myers, Pharyngula
“One cliche that always irritates me is when people say something to the effect that ‘those who use profanity just show the limitations of their own vocabulary.’ The proper response to such drivel is, obviously, ‘Oh, fuck you.’ I have an excellent vocabulary, thank you very much, and I doubt anyone would deny that. But sometimes profanity expresses an idea with a clarity and emphasis that other words do not.
“The use of profanity in writing is much like the use of spices during cooking. Used appropriately and with control, they add much to the dish; used in excess and without finesse, they can make the final result inedible (or unreadable).”
— Ed Brayton, Dispatches From the Culture Wars
“If the world dies of climate change, then written shall it be on our epitaph, that we argued ourselves to death.”
— dedalus, xkcd forums
“If the soul is an imaginary fantasy, then Mozart's music, Michaelangelo’s sculptures, Picasso’s paintings, the Wright brothers’ plane, every work of art and technology produced by people whose names have been lost to us, every child, every dream, has been created by us, mere mortal flesh unled by a magic puppeteer in the sky, unaided by angels or spirits. I find that wonderful.”
— PZ Myers, Pharyngula
“Let's get something straight: there is no such thing as objective journalism. Every single journalist brings his or her own preconceptions to everything they do, including me. There is no point in pretending otherwise. Just own up to your biases and wear them on your sleeve for all to see and readers and viewers can take that into account. All that really matters is accuracy. If bias leads to inaccuracies in the reporting, then point out the inaccuracies. If it doesn't, then accusations of bias are meaningless.”
— Ed Brayton, Dispatches From the Culture Wars
“Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake,… of searching and experimenting,… of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political.”
— Ignazio Silone, The God That Failed (1950)
“Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don’t regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.”
— Gerard K. O’Neill, 2081
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”
— Adlai E. Stevenson Jr., US diplomat, from a speech in Detroit, 1952
“There are two freedoms: the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.”
— Charles Kingsley
“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.”
— [unknown]
“Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.”
— [unknown, sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson]
“Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.”
— Thomas Macaulay
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
— Soren Kierkegaard
“The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.”
— Tommy Smothers
“Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.”
— Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, February 24, 1959
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
— Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing about Voltaire (though frequently misattributed to him)
“The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.”
— Rebecca West
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
“The various modes of worship […] were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.”
— Edward Gibbon
“No man treats a motor car as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin, he does not say, ‘You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go’. He attempts to find out what is wrong and set it right.”
— Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?
“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.”
— Mark Twain, “Man’s Place in the Animal World” (1869)
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”
— Alexander Pope
“No man is justified in doing evil on the grounds of expediency.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
“As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”
— [Uncertain, usually attributed to Andrew Carnegie]
“The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
— Epicurus (disputed)
“If anybody had [the cure for cancer] out there like so many people swear to me they do, you’d be two things: you’d be very rich and you’d be very famous. Otherwise, shut up.”
— Patrick Swayze
