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Showing posts from 2011

M.Cartmill

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.

George Burns

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.

Mark Twain

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

Stephen F Roberts

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

John Adams

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.

Anon

No man alive or dead understands women! And even if there was one, he wouldn’t believe it!

Anon

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

W.C.Fields

Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water.

Anon

Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.

Isaac Asimov

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.’

Anon

Because of the internet, never before have we had so many people so well-informed, yet at the same time, so completely wrong.

Stephen Jay Gould

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

James Reston

This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim.

Isaac Asimov

I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in non-scientists being wrong.

Arthur C. Clarke

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

Terry Pratchett

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Albert Einstein

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

Charles Lamb

I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father’s religion, if they can find out what it is.

De La Lastra’s Law

After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.

Paul Dirac

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.

H.L.Mencken

The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

Stephen Leacock

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

Anon

Why do banks charge you a “non sufficient funds” fee on money they already know you don’t have?

Pete Holmes

I think the government made Facebook in an attempt to make privacy uncool. Think about that. I think that’s true ‘cause they don’t have to tap our phones or survey us when we just yield to them everything, just on our own free will. Home address? It’s a little weird, OK. Phone number? Call me. Photos? Photos of everyone I know? Here, let me tag those for you.

Frank Herbert

The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action

Frank Herbert

The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action

Anon

ADULT: A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.

Sam Harris

An average Christian, in an average church, listening to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse — and there have been some extraordinary arrogant scientists.

Sam Harris

Recently , crowds of thousands gathered throughout the Muslim world - burning European embassies, issuing threats, taking hostages, even killing people - in protest over twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper. When was the last atheist riot?

Sam Harris

It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window.

Sam Harris

In fact, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a “non-astrologer” or a “non-alchemist.” We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.

Sam Harris

The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.

Robertson Davies

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

Dorothy Parker

The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant—and let the air out of the tires.

Bruce Grocott

I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.

Clive Barnes

Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.

Anon

Gray hair and baldness are hereditary. You get them from your children.

Anon

It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

Anon

A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body.

Ronald Reagan

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’

Willie Tyler

The reason lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn’t there the second time.

Thomas Carlyle

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

Anon

Kill a man and you are a murderer, kill many and you’re a conqueror. Kill ‘em all and you’re God!

Mark Twain

I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.

Ernest Benn

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

E.F.Schumacher

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.

Russell Baker

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.

Miss Piggy

B eauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.