Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Quotes - Forty-Two

 So, since I started this list, I came across some more quotes, and I didn't want them getting lost.  Enjoy.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been.  The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

--Isaac Asimov

Can priests bless stuff other than water?  I just think “holy guacamole” should mean something.

--@BootsMcGoot

An extra hour in 2024 is like a free bonus track on a Yoko Ono album.

--Ruth Buzzi

My life got better when I realized I didn’t have to be nice.  Nice got me ran over, stressed out, and disrespected.  I’m not nice.  I’m a good person.  There’s a difference.

--@cactustate

If you can’t explain something to a first-year student, then you haven’t really understood.

--Richard Feynman

Better sexy and racy than sexist and racist.

--Stephen Fry

I said everything was okie dokie artichokie, but to be honest it’s been extra horrendous asparagus.

--@geekysteven

As I hurtled through space, one though kept crossing my mind… every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.

--John Glenn

An early objection I had with Christianity at school was being told I was part of a flock.  Shepherds don’t just look after sheep because they like them!  They either want to fleece them, fuck them, or eat them!

--Christopher Hitchens

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

--Christopher Hitchens

How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.

--Christopher Hitchens

One must state it plainly.  Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody had the smallest idea what was going on.

--Christopher Hitchens

Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.

--Christopher Hitchens

What is more plausible?  That God impregnated a girl in the Middle East or that a Jewish girl lied to her betrothed about how she got pregnant?

--Christopher Hitchens

That’s the problem with gods; their pleasure and their wrath often look the same.

--@madmaudlingoes

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.

--H.L. Menken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

The March to Dispel Negative Perceptions of Clowns is still happening this Sunday at dusk, right at the edge of the woods near the abandoned children’s hospital.  The calliope we rented is out of tune but we’re going to go ahead and play it anyway.  Come join us!  Join.  Us.

--Patton Oswalt

To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels, and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision.  I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place – not to mention the “ethnic cleansing” presently being performed by Christians in our world – and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women.

--James Randi

What an astonishing thing a book is.  It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.  But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe someone dead for thousands of years.  Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.  Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs.  Books break the shackles of time.  A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

--Carl Sagan

Death is nothing at all.  It does not count.  I have only slipped away into the next room.  Nothing has happened.  Everything remains exactly as it was.  I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.  Whatever we were to each other; that we are still.  Call me by the old familiar name,  Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.  Put no difference into your tone.  Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.  Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.  Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.  Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.  Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.  Life means all that it ever meant.  It is the same as it ever was.  There is absolute and unbroken continuity.  What is this death but a negligible accident?  Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?  I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near. Just round the corner.  All is well.

--Henry Scott-Holland

Dreams save us.  Dreams lift us up and transform us into something better.  And on my soul, I swear that until my dream of a world where dignity, honor, and justice are the reality we all share, I’ll never stop fighting.  Ever.

--Superman

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now.  You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

--Rabbi Tarfon

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory.  If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?...  If we value freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life.  In days gone by, there were people who said to us, “You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory, and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so.”  Nothing could be more convincing.  Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

--Voltaire – Questions on Miracles (11th Letter), 1965

As a dwarf, I feel like a disappointment because I never learned to forge.

--Brad Williams


 

Brave enough to get tattooed, too scared to make a phone call.

Well, aren’t we just two scoops of grumpy in a bowl full of bitchy this morning.

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