Quotations

Quotations To Remember
Collected by Ed Sr.

Martin Luther, (1833-1546) founder of the Lutheran Church

"What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:

First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. (remainder omitted)

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuteronomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: "what they teach you in accord with the law of the Lord." Those villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], "You are Peter," etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the word of God, and therefore he forfeited the right to teach.

Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay at home. (...remainder omitted).

"The Jews and Their Lies" Martin Luther 1543)
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/luther-jews.html

"I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition and that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s). Further, devils, demons, angels and saints are myths; there is no life after death, no heaven or hell; the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and 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, from Skeptic magazine (1995 Vol.3 No.4 p.11)

"The will of God is the refuge of ignorance."--Baruch Spinoza.

"Laughing has always been considered by theologians as a crime. Ministers have always said you will have no respect for our ideas unless you are solemn. Solemnity is a condition precedent to believing anything without evidence. And if you can only get a man solemn enough, awed enough, he will believe anything."

--Robert Ingersoll

"When the world seems really senseless and cruel, nothing makes me feel better than to believe that there is a senseless and cruel omnipotent being running the whole thing who wants to fry my butt forever."
(Author unknown)

"Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who is too ethical to become a minister."
(Author unknown)

"Those that can make you believe in absurdities can also make you commit atrocities."
Voltaire

Faith = Belief, free of evidence and other annoying requirements.
(Author unknown)

"Religions seek to control a man's mind while churches seek to empty his wallet."
John Ouvrier

"There is a principle which is a buffer against any information, which is proof against all argument and which does not fail to keep every human being in constant ignorance. This principle is to condemn before researching."
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

"We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year's fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Gods" (1872)

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
            -- Professor Steven Weinberg,
(Emperor Has No Clothes Award winner, November 1999)

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too."

-- Somerset Maugham, Author

"The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security." FBI Director Louis Freeh (1993)

-- from the National Review, October 24, 1994.

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ...".

-- William Jefferson Clinton, March 11, 1993 in USA Today.

"Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it."

-- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Truth is hate to those who hate the truth. And that is the truth." -- Anonymous

"Not to know what happened before means to remain forever a child "

-- Marcus T. Cicero (106-43 BC)

"The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind."

- Rousseau

"Strange times are these, in which we live, when old and young are taught in falsehood's school. And the one man who dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool." -

Plato

"Any truth is better than make-believe ... rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth" -

Henry David Thoreau

"Most people, sometime in their lives, stumble across truth. Most jump up, brush themselves off, and hurry on about their business as if nothing had happened."

Winston Churchill

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to relive it ..."

-- George Santayana, Historian

"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others." -

Thomas Jefferson

"The lust for power, for dominating others, inflames the heart more than any other passion"

- Tacitus

"... it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen to set brush fires in people's minds..." -- Samuel Adams,

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

Galileo Galilei

"The twentieth century, with its scores of millions of supernumerary dead, has been called the age of ideology. And the age of ideology, clearly, was a mere hiatus in the age of religion, which shows no sign of expiry. Since it is no longer permissible to disparage any single faith or creed, let us start disparaging all of them. To be clear: an ideology is a belief system with an inadequate basis in reality; a religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. It is straightforward -and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion."

Martin Amis, in the June 1, 2002 Guardian

"I believe that there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

-- James Madison

"It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong."

-Thomas Jefferson

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters." Allan Simpson

"The best laid plans of mice and men are often gone aglee."

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Carl Sagan

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

Thomas Jefferson

As Mark Twain put it "Faith is believing in what you know ain't so".

'Everyone's scared of nutters, but even nutters are scared of religious nutters'

Simon Munnery (as 'Alan Parker - Urban Warrior)

"Life can be beautiful, profound, and awe-inspiring, even without an irate god threatening us with eternal torment."

Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One?

Quote: "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

     -- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930

Work like you don't need the money...

Love like you've never been hurt...

Dance like nobody's watching...

"Never be satisfied with what you THINK you know..."

"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
-- Samuel Clemens, author who wrote under the nom de plume, Mark Twain

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." -- Abraham Lincoln

"It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, it may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result."

- Gandhi

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up."

-- Rev. Dr. Martin Niemoeller, July 1, 1937; arrested by the Third Reich

"Do not be afraid of your enemies - in the worst case they can kill you; Do not be afraid of your friends - in the worst case they can betray you; Be afraid of the indifferent ones: it is from their silent blessings that all the evil is happening in the world!" -- Bruno Yasensky, Russian writer.

Voltaire commented, "If God created man in his own image, we have certainly returned the favor."

"Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen."

-- Michel de Montaigne

"... there is much truth in the Italian saying, 'Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you.'" -- Benjamin Franklin

"go with the most logical answer, it's probably right."

Ockham's razor

"Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide."

Tom Robbins

"Organized religion is for those who are afraid of hell and spirituality is for those who have been there."

Gary Busey on the Howard Stern show.

Unsolicited advice is nothing more than thinly disguised criticism."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
-- H.L. Mencken

Jesus, save me from your followers.

You can take a person out of the cult, but you can't take the cult out of a person. Remove his cult and he'll find another one.
-- John Bowers

"If you're not a Liberal by the age of 18, you have no heart.
If you're not conservative by the age of 30, you have no sense.

Winston Churchill, Paraphrasing

" I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth, if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives"

Tolstoy

...there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new one....

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513

For what is Truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived.

Oscar Wilde:

Simpletons are those who are convinced of their infallibility, while experts are those who realize they don't really know much at all.

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.

Aldous Huxley

I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy   something.

Jackie Mason

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.

Franklin P. Jones

We're all in this alone.

Lily Tomlin

"The first divine was the first rogue who met the first fool."
---Voltaire

One good thing about being wrong is the joy it brings to others.

More harm has been done by people trying to do good than by people trying to do harm.

"It is a pity ignorance is not painful. Then we might do something to alleviate it."

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

Edmund Burke

The real purveyors and defenders of truth face critique; indeed, they welcome it, for they have nothing to hide; besides, they may find themselves the recipients of Enlightenment.

"Friends are one soul living in two bodies."

Aristotle

"What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." Sir Walter Scott

If you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem.

George Carlin

"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. ... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."

(Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789)

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."

-- George Washington, Commanding General of the Continental Army, Father of Our Country and First President of the United States in a speech to Congress, January 7, 1790

"1935 will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future."

-- Adolph Hitler

"Give me your four year-olds and in a generation I will build a socialist state

... destroy the family and the society will collapse."

-- Vladimir Lenin

New 6/10/01

"For god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in him would believe in anything."

"The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler is that God is more proficient at genocide."

Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt.

Any belief worth having must survive doubt.

Explaining the unknown by means of the unobservable is always a perilous business.

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity you don't realize how irritating it was 'til it's gone.

Theists think all gods but theirs are false. Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one.

FAITH -
An attitude fostered by individuals in high places in order to ensure the subservience of those in their charge.

freethinker n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief.

A society without religion is like a crazed psychopath without a loaded .45

Fundamentalism means never having to say "I'm wrong."

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.

Two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.

"Faith is deciding to allow yourself to believe something your intellect would otherwise cause you to reject -- otherwise there's no need for faith."

God hated the world so much that he sent his only son so that whoever does not believe in him will perish and be denied eternal life.

Reason is, of all things in the world, the most hurtful to a reasoning human being. God only allows it to remain with those he intends to damn, and his goodness takes it away from those he intends to save or render useful in the Church . . . If reason had any part in religion, what then would become of faith?

Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.

"The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
[Herbert Agar, "A Time for Greatness" 1942]

"As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless conversions -- to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. 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 -- the powers of reason are surprisingly ineffective in changing the believer's mind."
[Steve Allen]

"God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith, then, is built upon ignorance and hope."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen, on the Bible Religion & Morality"]

"If...we assume that there is no God, it follows that morality is even more important than if there is a Deity. If God exists, his unlimited power can certainly redress imbalances in the scale of human justice. But if there is no God, then it is up to man to be as moral as he can."
[Steve Allen]

"Another philosopher suggests that saying prayers is equivalent to believing that the universe is governed by a Being who changes his mind if you ask him to."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen On the Bible, Religion and Morality," 1990]

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
[Susan B. Anthony]

"If you were taught that elves caused rain, every time it rained, you'd see the proof of elves."
[Ariex]

"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly and warn the people of Canada..."
Isaac Asimov

"We owe it to ourselves as respectable human beings, as thinking human beings, to do what we can to make humanity more rational...Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests."
[Isaac Asimov]

"...anger is the common substitute for logic among those who have no evidence for what they desperately want to believe."
Isaac Asimov

"It seems to me that it's insulting to human beings to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being...I have a conscience. It doesn't depend on religion."
Isaac Asimov

"People prefer to believe what they prefer to be true."
[Francis Bacon]

"People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy."
Mikhail A. Bakunin

"Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have."
James Baldwin

"The very concept of sin comes from the bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?"
Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"

"It's not easy to change world views. Faith has its own momentum and belief is comfortable. To restructure reality is traumatic and scary. That is why many intelligent people continue to believe: unbelief is an unknown."
Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"

"Not thinking critically, I assumed that the "successful" prayers were proof that God answers prayer while the failures were proof that there was something wrong with me."
Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"

"Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, "yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it."
[ex-preacher Dan Barker]

"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that _we_ are the ones that need help?"
Dan Barker

"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits."
Dan Barker Former evangelist, author, critic

"I threw out all the bath water, and there was no baby there."
Dan Barker

"Modern societies march towards morality in proportion as they leave religion behind."
[Paul Bert]

"Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice."
Georges Bizet

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg

"Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation."

U.S. Supreme Court 1995

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