Help w/a hangover

this works for me just about every time:

• Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus
• Energen-C

Cure for colds..

in my experience, i have found that gargling with a solution of 1/2 hydrogen-peroxide and 1/2 water is a great way to prevent and treat colds...please give it a try. I was raised on the "gargle with saltwater" method, but find the hydro-perox to be superior!

Goals, Effort, & Persistence

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. ~Henry Ford

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. ~Les Brown

If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. ~Lawrence J. Peter

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done. ~Samuel Johnson, Boswell's Life, 1770

Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible. ~Doug Larson

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. ~Milton Berle

Goals are dreams with deadlines. ~Diana Scharf Hunt

The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it. ~Charles DeLint

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. ~T.S. Eliot

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. ~Thomas Jefferson

Many an opportunity is lost because a man is out looking for four-leaf clovers. ~Unknown

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. ~Thomas Edison

The best helping hand that you will ever receive is the one at the end of your own arm. ~Fred Dehner

The person who is waiting for something to turn up might start with their shirt sleeves. ~Garth Henrichs

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. ~Attributed to both Vidal Sassoon and Donald Kendall

Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat. ~Ann Landers

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work. ~George Bernard Shaw

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. ~Reggie Leach

Wise men make more opportunities than they find. ~Francis Bacon

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all. ~Rita Mae Brown

The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher. ~Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley

Now I know, a refuge never growsfrom a chin in the hand and a thoughtful poseGotta tend the earth if you want a rose.~Indigo Girls

If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up. ~J.M. Power

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all. ~Sam Ewing

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. ~Will Rogers

Some people dream of success...while others wake up and work hard at it. ~Unknown

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. ~Abraham Lincoln

Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings. ~C.D. Jackson

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. ~Unknown

God gives us dreams a size too big so that we can grow in them. ~Unknown

If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and Earth will pause to say, Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

People know you for what you've done, not for what you plan to do. ~Unknown

Between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out. ~Italian proverb

After all is said and done, a lot more will have been said than done. ~Unknown

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action. ~Frank Tibolt

An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied. ~Arnold Glasow

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. ~Mark Twain

Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid only of standing still. ~Chinese proverb

Between the great things we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing. ~Adolph Monod

Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned. ~Peter Marshall

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't. ~Henry Ward Beecher

He who is outside his door has the hardest part of his journey behind him. ~Dutch proverb

Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves. ~Dale Carnegie

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. ~Unknown

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. ~Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. ~Life's Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there. ~Josh Billings

Fall seven times, stand up eight. ~Japanese proverb

The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground. ~Unknown

If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again. ~Flavia Weedn, Flavia and the Dream Maker

Life is full of obstacle illusions. ~Grant Frazier

The race is not always to the swift...but to those who keep on running. ~Unknown

You can't go through life quitting everything. If you're going to achieve anything, you've got to stick with something. ~From the television show Family Matters

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. ~Albert Einstein

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another. ~Walter Elliott

It is never too late to be who you might have been. ~George Eliot

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. ~George Bernard Shaw

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines. ~Robert Schuller

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum. ~Unknown

Success is 10% inspiration, 90% last-minute changes. ~Advertisement on a billboard

Someday is not a day of the week. ~Unknown

Seventy percent of success in life is showing up. ~Woody Allen

To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing. ~Eva Young

What may be done at any time will be done at no time. ~Scottish proverb

The best way to get something done is to begin. ~Unknown

Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week. ~Unknown

Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out. ~James Bryant Conant

The best angle from which to approach any problem is the try-angle. ~Unknown

The impossible is often the untried. ~Jim Goodwin

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done. ~Henry Ford

When I was a Boy Scout, we played a game when new Scouts joined the troop. We lined up chairs in a pattern, creating an obstacle course through which the new Scouts, blindfolded, were supposed to maneuver. The Scoutmaster gave them a few moments to study the pattern before our adventure began. But as soon as the victims were blindfolded, the rest of us quietly removed the chairs. I think life is like this game. Perhaps we spend our lives avoiding obstacles we have created for ourselves and in reality exist only in our minds. We're afraid to apply for that job, take violin lessons, learn a foreign language, call an old friend, write our Congressman - whatever it is that we would really like to do but don't because of personal obstacles. Don't avoid any chairs until you run smack into one. And if you do, at least you'll have a place to sit down. ~Pierce Vincent Eckhart

Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back

Don't waste time learning the "tricks of the trade." Instead, learn the trade. ~Attributed to both James Charlton and H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going. ~Beverly Sills

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. ~Thomas A. Edison

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. ~James Bond, Tomorrow Never Dies

If you don't have time to do it right you must have time to do it over. ~Unknown

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. ~Henry David Thoreau

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. ~David Lloyd George

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. ~Orson Welles, The Third Man, 1949

Know your limits...but never stop trying to exceed them. ~Unknown

Opportunities are never lost; someone will take the one you miss. ~Unknown

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible. ~Henry Ford, Sr.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. ~Peter Drucker

We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet. ~Unknown

When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves. ~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation. ~Pearl S. Buck

Vision without action is a daydream. Action with without vision is a nightmare. ~Japanese proverb

When the horse is dead, get off. ~Unknown

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anyone could have. ~Unknown

The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it. ~Elaine Agather

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short. ~Confucius

Success & Failure

If at first you don't succeed, you're running about average. ~M.H. Alderson

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. ~Thomas Edison

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~Bill Cosby

The only time you don't fail is the last time you try anything - and it works. ~William Strong

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill

I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it. ~Jonathan Winters

If you're doing your best, you won't have any time to worry about failure. ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

There is no failure except in no longer trying. ~Elbert Hubbard

There is no point at which you can say, "Well, I'm successful now. I might as well take a nap." ~Carrie Fisher

Failure is an event...not a person. ~Unknown

There is no failure. Only feedback. ~Robert Allen

Don't aim for success, if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally. ~David Frost

What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down. ~Mary Pickford

It is wise to keep in mind that no success or failure is necessarily final. ~Unknown

Success: To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded! ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~Samuel Beckett

Failure doesn't mean you are a failure...it just means you haven't succeeded yet. ~Robert Schuller

It is a mistake to suppose that people succeed through success; they often succeed through failures. ~Unknown

In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time. ~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind. ~George Bernard Shaw

Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves. ~Larry King

Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it. ~Unknown

That man is successful who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of the intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Worry

If I had my life to live over, I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. ~Don Herold

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which will never happen. ~James Russel Lowell

If things go wrong, don't go with them. ~Roger Babson

Worry is interest paid in advance for a debt you may never owe. ~Unknown

Rule #1: Don't sweat the small stuff.Rule #2: It's all small stuff.~Dr. Michael Mantell

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles...by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it. ~Mark Twain

Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday. ~Unknown

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. ~Leo Buscaglia

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. ~Dale Carnegie

I've developed a new philosophy...I only dread one day at a time. ~Charlie Brown

Troubles are a lot like people - they grow bigger if you nurse them. ~Unknown

If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today. ~E. Joseph Cossman

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things"

People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. ~Unknown

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. ~Elbert Hubbard

Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere. ~Unknown

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety. ~Plato

We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death. ~David Sarnoff

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other. ~Francis Bacon, "Of Death"

If you spend all your time worrying about dying, living isn't going to be much fun. ~From the television show Roseanne

Some people are so afraid do die that they never begin to live. ~Henry Van Dyke

He who doesn't fear death dies only once. ~Giovanni Falcone

Living in the Now

One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us. ~Michael Cibenko

There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday. ~Robert . ~Jan Glidewell

Would you keep a chive on your tooth just because you enjoyed last night's potato? ~From the television show Boston Common

I have memories - but only a fool stores his past in the future. ~David Gerrold

I can't wait all my life on a street of broken dreams.~Journey, "It Could Have Been You"

No man is rich enough to buy back his past. ~Oscar Wilde

We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time. ~Art Buchwald

If you are still talking about what you did yesterday, you haven't done much today. ~Unknown

Don't let yesterday use up too much of today. ~Cherokee Indian proverb

The past is never there when you try to go back. It exists, but only in memory. To pretend otherwise is to invite a mess. ~Chris Cobbs

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. ~Alexander Graham Bell

Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future. ~T. Sachs

Nothing is worth more than this day. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee. ~Montaigne

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. ~Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That's why we call it the present. ~Babatunde Olatunji

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. ~Alan Watts

We are always getting ready to live but never living. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tomorrow is no place to place your better days. ~Dave Matthews

If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is. ~Unknown

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. ~James Thurber

The future is always beginning now. ~Mark Strand, Reasons for Moving

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough. ~Albert Einstein

Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized. ~Leo Buscaglia

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. ~Dale Carnegie

Pile up too many tomorrows and you'll find that you've collected nothing but a bunch of empty yesterdays. ~The Music Man

Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far. ~Euripides

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. ~Charles F. Kettering

Life's a journey, not a destination. ~Aerosmith

If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. If you don't wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. ~Senegalese proverb

The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time. ~Abraham Lincoln

Quotes about War

War & Peace, Violence & Nonviolence
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. ~Bertrand Russell

Join the Army! Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people, and kill them. ~Full Metal Jacket

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. ~John F. Kennedy

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. ~David Friedman

"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes. ~James Morrow

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world. ~Robert E. Lee, in a letter to his wife, 1864

Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him. ~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter

War would end if the dead could return. ~Stanley Baldwin

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?" ~Eve Merriam

Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals. ~Colman McCarthy, quoted in You Said a Mouthful, Ronald D. Fuchs, ed.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. ~Voltaire, War

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. ~Abraham Flexner

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. ~John F. Kennedy

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? ~Joan Baez

I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together. ~Ronald Reagan, 1985

[John] Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war. ~Isaac Asimov

The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst. ~Henry Fosdick

There was never a good war or a bad peace. ~Benjamin Franklin

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth. ~Mark Twain

It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U.S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the senate. ~George McGovern

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. ~George McGovern

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. ~Jean-Paul Sartre

Draft beer; not people. ~UnknownThe release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. ~Albert Einstein

You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time. ~Albert Einstein

If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "no" to war. For one does not create a human society on mounds of corpses. ~Louis Lecoin

The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars. ~William Westmoreland

I have never advocated war except as a means of peace. ~Ulysses S. Grant

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the name of peaceThey waged the warsAin't they got no shame~Nikki Giovanni

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. ~Ernest Hemingway

War makes thieves and peace hangs them. ~George Herbert

You can no more win a war that you can win an earthquake. ~Jeanette Rankin

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. ~Carl Sandburg

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Declaration of Rights"

To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. ~Michael Servetus

The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red people. ~Gerome Gragni and James Rado, 1967

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace. ~Gladstone

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die. ~Herbert Hoover

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. ~Havelock Ellis

Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong? ~Holly Near

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. ~Napoleon Bonaparte

If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. ~Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War

The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war. ~Vera Brittain, 1964

The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service. ~Albert Einstein

O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it. ~Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~John Stewart Mill

We challenge the culture of violence when we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it's tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it's still valid. ~Gerard Vanderhaar

The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out. ~Chinese proverb

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? ~Alan Paton

There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed. ~Gil Bailie

In violence we forget who we are. ~Mary McCarthy

It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence...and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect. ~Manitonquat

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet. ~Dave Barry

I believe everybody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string. ~Scott Adams

I will not carry a gun.... I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun! ~Hawkeye, M*A*S*H, "Officer of the Day"

And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. ~George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"

Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it. ~George Bernard Shaw

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private citizens will occasionally kill theirs. ~Elbert Hubbard

Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. ~Josef de Maistre

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nonviolence doesn't always work - but violence never does. ~Madge Micheels-Cyrus

In some cases nonviolence requires more militancy than violence. ~Cesar Chavez

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. ~Mother Teresa

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. ~Friedrich Nietzsche View Reflections, a painting by Lee Teter, which captures a heart-wrenching moment at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Environment & Nature:

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ~Native American proverb

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. ~Marshall McLuhan, 1964

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. ~Henry David Thoreau

The sun, the moon, and the stars would have disappeared long ago, had they happened to be within reach of predatory human hands. ~Havelock Ellis

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. ~Mohandas K. Gandhi, quoted in E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. ~Robert Orben

It wasn't the Exxon Valdez captain's driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours. ~Greenpeace advertisement, New York Times, 25 February 1990

We must not be forced to explore the universe in search of a new home because we have made the Earth inhospitable, even uninhabitable. For if we do not solve the environmental and related social problems that beset us on Earth - pollution, toxic contamination, resource depletion, prejudice, poverty, hunger - those problems will surely accompany us to other worlds. ~Donald G. Kaufman and Cecilia M. Franz, Biosphere 2000: Protecting Our Global Environment, 1996

The struggle to save the global environment is in one way much more difficult than the struggle to vanquish Hitler, for this time the war is with ourselves. We are the enemy, just as we have only ourselves as allies. ~Al Gore

Modern technologyOwes ecologyAn apology.~Alan M. Eddison

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle, 1855

In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops. ~Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, 1971

You said that you wanted to put us upon a reservation, to build us houses and make us medicine lodges. I was born where there were no enclosures and everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls. ~Ten Bears for the Comanche at The Council of Medicine Lodge Creek, 1867

Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites. ~William Ruckelshaus, Business Week, 18 June 1990

When a man throws an empty cigarette package from an automobile, he is liable to a fine of $50. When a man throws a billboard across a view, he is richly rewarded. ~Pat Brown, quoted in David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1985

Worldwide practice of Conservation and the fair and continued access by all nations to the resources they need are the two indispensable foundations of continuous plenty and of permanent peace. ~Gifford Pinchot

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. ~Albert Schweitzer, quoted in James Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance. ~Buddha

Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us. ~Henrik Tikkanen

Man is a blind, witless, low brow, anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth. ~Ian McHarg

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. ~Edward O. Wilson

Why was man created on the last day? So that he can be told, when pride possesses him: God created the gnat before thee. ~The Talmud

Humanity is on the march, earth itself is left behind. ~David Ehrenfeld, The Arrogance of Humanism, 1978

God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west...keeping the world in chains. If [our nation] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts. ~Mahatma Gandhi

I'm not an environmentalist. I'm an Earth warrior. ~Darryl Cherney, quoted in Smithsonian, April 1990

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? ~Robert Redford, Yosemite National Park dedication, 1985

Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values.... God made life simple. It is man who complicates it. ~Charles A. Lindbergh, Reader's Digest, July 1972

Newspapers: dead trees with information smeared on them. ~Horizon, "Electronic Frontier"

They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers. ~James G. Watt, quoted in Newsweek, 8 March 1982

I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy.... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago. ~Sir George Porter, quoted in The Observer, 26 August 1973

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. ~Ralph Nader, quoted in Linda Botts, ed., Loose Talk, 1980

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. ~Aldo Leopold

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. ~Marya Mannes, More in Anger, 1958

There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet. ~Brooke Medicine Eagle

The packaging for a microwavable "microwave" dinner is programmed for a shelf life of maybe six months, a cook time of two minutes and a landfill dead-time of centuries. ~David Wann, Buzzworm, November 1990

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. ~Henry David Thoreau

So bleak is the picture...that the bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century. ~Philip Shabecoff, New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978

The sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away. ~Stephanie Mills, ed., In Praise of Nature, 1990

Dig a trench through a landfill and you will see layers of phone books like geographical strata or layers of cake.... During a recent landfill dig in Phoenix, I found newspapers dating from 1952 that looked so fresh you might read one over breakfast. ~William Rathje, The Economist, 8 September 1990

Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress. ~John Clapham, A Concise Economic History of Britain, 1957

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess." ~Art Buchwald, 1970

A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man. ~Arnold Toynbee

In its broadest ecological context, economic development is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting the natural environment. ~Richard Wilkinson

The command "Be fruitful and multiply" was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two people. ~William Ralph Inge, More Lay Thoughts of a Dean, 1931

The problem is no longer that with every pair of hands that comes into the world there comes a hungry stomach. Rather it is that, attached to those hands are sharp elbows. ~Paul A. Samuelson, Newsweek, 12 June 1967

U.S. consumers and industry dispose of enough aluminum to rebuild the commercial air fleet every three months; enough iron and steel to continuously supply all automakers; enough glass to fill New York's World Trade Center every two weeks. ~Environmental Defense Fund advertisement, Christian Science Monitor, 1990

Water flows uphill towards money. ~Anonymous, saying in the American West, quoted by Ivan Doig in Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert, 1986

If people in a Third World nation have no pure water for drinking, is it still all right to use First World water for swimming pools? ~Sara Ebenreck, Catholic World, July-August 1990

The days a man spends fishing or spends hunting should not be deducted from the time that he's on earth. In other words, if I fish today, that should be added to the amount of time I get to live. That's the way I look at recreation. That's why I'll be a big conservation, environmental President, because I plan to fish and hunt as much as I possibly can. ~George Bush, quoted in Los Angeles Times, 30 December 1988

For 200 years we've been conquering Nature. Now we're beating it to death. ~Tom McMillan, quoted in Francesca Lyman, The Greenhouse Trap, 1990

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ~Elwyn Brooks White, Essays of E.B. White, 1977

The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages. ~Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, États et empires de la lune, 1656

Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work. ~Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, translated by Philemon Holland

A living planet is a much more complex metaphor for deity than just a bigger father with a bigger fist. If an omniscient, all-powerful Dad ignores your prayers, it's taken personally. Hear only silence long enough, and you start wondering about his power. His fairness. His very existence. But if a world mother doesn't reply, Her excuse is simple. She never claimed conceited omnipotence. She has countless others clinging to her apron strings, including myriad species unable to speak for themselves. To Her elder offspring She says - go raid the fridge. Go play outside. Go get a job. Or, better yet, lend me a hand. I have no time for idle whining. ~David Brin

The control man has secured over nature has far outrun his control over himself. ~Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 1953

To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. ~Theodore Roosevelt, seventh annual message, 3 December 1907

Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they're killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? "Sweetheart, let's make up. Have this deceased squirrel." ~The Washington Post

Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations. ~David Gerrold

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars...and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are. ~Osho

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. ~Albert Einstein

Till now man has been up against Nature; from now on he will be up against his own nature. ~Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future, 1963

Will urban sprawl spread so far that most people lose all touch with nature? Will the day come when the only bird a typical American child ever sees is a canary in a pet shop window? When the only wild animal he knows is a rat - glimpsed on a night drive through some city slum? When the only tree he touches is the cleverly fabricated plastic evergreen that shades his gifts on Christmas morning? ~Frank N. Ikard, North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Houston, March 1968

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fortune of the Republic, 1878

You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet. ~Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~John Muir, 1913, in L.M. Wolfe, ed., John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938

How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude! ~Emily Dickinson, letter to Mrs. J.S. Cooper, 1880

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,We fell them down and turn them into paper,That we may record our emptiness.~Kahlil Gibran

How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life? ~Charles A. Lindbergh, Reader's Digest, November 1939

I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy. ~Hamlin Garland, McClure's, February 1899

We have always had reluctance to see a tract of land which is empty of men as anything but a void. The "waste howling wilderness" of Deuteronomy is typical. The Oxford Dictionary defines wilderness as wild or uncultivated land which is occupied "only" by wild animals. Places not used by us are "wastes." Areas not occupied by us are "desolate." Could the desolation be in the soul of man? ~John A. Livingston, in Borden Spears, ed., Wilderness Canada, 1970

It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water - and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood. ~Bernand De Voto, Fortune, June 1947

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clean air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. ~Stewart L. Udall, quoted in William Schwarz, ed., Voices for the Wilderness, 1969No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means. ~Garrett Hardin, The Ecologist, February 1974

Quotations: Religious Skepticism

Creationism & Creation Science
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. ~Ashley Montague

Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing "Does not!" ~Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org

[Creation science is] an attempt to give credibility to Hebrew mythology by making people believe that the world's foremost biologists, paleontologists, and geologists are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops. ~Ron Peterson

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. ~Isaac Asimov

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. ~Stephen J. Gould

If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction. ~Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One?

The order of creation in the Bible is woefully incorrect and violates even the most simple and obvious rules of natural science. ~Charles Cazeau, U.S. professor of geology

Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage - good teaching - than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise? ~Stephen Jay Gould, The Skeptical Inquirer

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. ~Aldous Huxley

No doubt a sizeable majority of Americans believe in the concept of a Creator or, at least, are not opposed to the concept and see nothing wrong with teaching school children about the idea. The application and content of First Amendment principles are not determined by public opinion polls or by a majority vote. Whether the proponents of Act 590 constitute the majority or the minority is quite irrelevant under a constitutional system of government. No group, no matter how large or small, may use the organs of government, of which the public schools are the most conspicuous and influential, to foist its religious beliefs on others. ~U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton, overturning Arkansas Act 590, requiring public schools to teach creation science

Louisiana's [1981] creationism law, which requires creationism to be taught wherever the theory of evolution is explained, is unconstitutional, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.... "The act's intended effect is to discredit evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of creationism, a religious belief," the U.S. Court of Appeals said. ~Associated Press article in the San Francisco Chronicle, 9 July 1985

More than half the college students polled in three states, including California, said they are creationists who believe that God created Adam and Eve, while about one-third believe in aliens, Big Foot and the lost city of Atlantis. The poll results, released yesterday by Texas researchers, also indicated that students who believe in creationism are less likely to read books, tend to be more politically conservative and have a lower grade-point average than students who dispute that God created Earth in six days. Last fall, about 1000 students attending colleges in Texas, Connecticut and California filled out detailed questionnaire on their beliefs. In Texas, 71 percent of students said they believe in the story of Adam and Eve, while 51 percent in Connecticut and 47 percent in California said they believed in the biblical first couple. An average of 44 percent of the students in the three states said the story of Noah's Ark is true. About one-third of all the students surveyed believed that Big Foot, a hairy man-like creature reputed to live in the mountains of northwest America, actually exists. An equal number believed in the lost city of Atlantis, a legendary island of advanced civilization that supposedly sank into the ocean. Thirty percent of the students responding to the survey said aliens from outer space visited Earth in ancient times. Overall, 37 percent said they believed in ghosts, and 39 percent said it is possible to communicate with the dead. ~San Francisco Chronicle, 3 November 1986 (UPI)

If you're looking for a little background reading on scientific creationism, it's best not to take the word scientific too seriously. A three-year database search of 4,000 scientific publications - focusing on the names of people associated with the Institute for Creation Research and on phrases and keywords such as 'creationism' - didn't turn up a single paper. A follow-up study of 68 journals found that only 18 of 135,000 total manuscript submissions concerned scientific creationism, and all 18 were rejected. Reasons cited included 'flawed arguments,' 'ramblings,' and 'a high-school theme quality.' ~Science, September 1985

The "dropping of context" - deliberately and deceitfully - by Creationist "spokesmen" is part of their game of fraud in the "use" of quotations from scientists. And it "works" (rhetorically, for the kinds of audience in front of which they use it) when the readers do NOT have the basic background in critical reading. ~Michael Siemon

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another. ~John Burroughs

Another possible danger is that in presenting the gospel to the lost and in defending God's truth we ourselves will seem to be false. It is time for Christian people to recognize that the defense of this modern, young-Earth, Flood-geology creationism is simply not truthful. It is simply not in accord with the facts that God has given. Creationism must be abandoned by Christians before harm is done. The persistent attempt of the creationist movement to get their points of view established in educational institutions can only bring harm to the Christian cause. Can we seriously expect non-Christian educational leaders to develop a respect for Christianity if we insist on teaching the brand of science that creationism brings with it? Will not the forcing of modern creationism on the public simply lend credence to the idea already entertained by so many intellectual leaders that Christianity, at least in its modern form, is sheer anti-intellectual obscurantism? I fear that it will. ~Davis Young, Christianity and the Age of the Earth, 1982

Facts & Refutations:

The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example, while loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine? ~Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One?

God tells Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If this was the only way they could understand the difference between good and evil, how could they have known that it was wrong to disobey God and eat the fruit? ~Laurie Lynn

Not only might one-quarter to one-half of the weight be lost in planing, whereas with iron only a minute fraction was lost in this way, but half of the weight of timber in a wooden ship was wasted, its only use being to hold the other half in position. Even so, a wooden ship had great stresses as a structure. The absolute limit of its length was 300 feet, and it was liable to "hogging" and "sagging" in addition to being unable to withstand the local strain of the screw propeller. ~Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870-1914

Jesus was almost certainly not 'of Nazareth.' An overwhelming body of evidence indicates that Nazareth did not exist in biblical times. The town is unlikely to have appeared before the third century. ~Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy

If God is love, and if God is also omnipresent, then the Devil cannot exist. If the Devil exists, God cannot be love and also be omnipresent. Yet, an omnipresent God of love and the Devil are both said to exist. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure that there is something wrong here! ~Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian

It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin. ~H.L. Mencken

It has been contended for many years that the Ten Commandments are the foundations of all ideas of justice and law. Nothing can be more stupidly false. Thousands of years before Moses, the Egyptians had a code far better. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion? ~Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-Semitic Christians

The problem with fundamentalists insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible is that the meaning of words change. A prime example is 'Spare the rod, spoil the child.' A rod was a stick used by shepherds to guide their sheep to go in the desired direction. Shepherds did not use it to beat their sheep. The proper translation of the saying is 'Give your child guidance, or they will go astray.' It does not mean 'Beat the shit out of your child or he will become rotten' as many fundamentalist parents seem to belive. ~Unknown

A sin [original sin] without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If a man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. ~Ayn Rand

A religious conservative is a fanatic about a dead radical. ~Unknown

The Bible:

The Bible as we have it contains elements that are scientifically incorrect or even morally repugnant. No amount of 'explaining away' can convince us that such passages are the product of Divine Wisdom. ~Bernard J. Bamberger, The Story of Judaism

If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going? ~Unknown

The Bible may be the truth but it's not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. ~Samuel Butler

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. ~George Bernard Shaw

The Bible is literature, not dogma. ~George Santayana

Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speaking, there is no such book. To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound into one volume. These books are written by many people at different times, and no one knows the time or the identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin of things. Between the first and the last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passed since the discovery of America by Columbus. ~Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic

All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention - of barbarian invention - is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the coiled form of superstition - then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity. ~Robert G. Ingersoll, The Gods, 1872

The Bible is a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology. ~Mark Twain, Mark Twain and the Bible

The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it. ~George Santayana, 1863-1952, U.S. philosopher, writer, and professor

The Bible was a collection of books written at different times by different men - a strange mixture of diverse human documents - and a tissue of irreconcilable notions. Inspired? The Bible is not even intelligent. It is not even good craftsmanship, but is full of absurdities and contradictions. ~E. Haldeman-Julius, The Meaning Of Atheism

The book, called the Bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! ~Robert G. Ingersoll, The Gods, 1872

Few intelligent Christians can still hold to the idea that the Bible is an infallible Book, that it contains no linguistic errors, no historical discrepancies, no antiquated scientific assumptions, not even bad ethical standards. Historical investigation and literary criticism have taken the magic out of the Bible and have made it a composite human book, written by many hands in different ages. The existence of thousands of variations of texts makes it impossible to hold the doctrine of a book verbally infallible. Some might claim for the original copies of the Bible an infallible character, but this view only begs the question and makes such Christian apologetics more ridiculous in the eyes of the sincere man. ~Elmer Homrighausen, Christianity in America

There are many extraordinary tales from antiquity, including women with snakes for hair, creatures whose gaze turns you to stone, creatures with equine bodies and human torsos, many accounts of people rising from the dead, lots of tales of magic, and numerous accounts of physical encounters with fantastic beings. Ancient people were a superstitious, scientifically primitive lot, and believed in many things that today we know are silly. I find it bizarre that so many people see nothing suspicious about the extraordinary or supernatural claims of the Bible, yet don't hesitate to express disbelief in equally well documented claims of minotaurs, basilisks, and wizards. ~Scott Brown

A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism. ~Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian

The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs. ~Bill Maher

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind. ~Thomas Paine

The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does rapture, or second coming, or original sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add omniscience, omnipresence, supernatural, transcendence, afterlife, deity, divinity, theology, monotheism, missionary, immaculate conception, Christmas, Christianity, evangelical, fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, pope, cardinal, catechism, purgatory, penance, transubstantiation, excommunication, dogma, chastity, unpardonable sin, infallibility, incarnation, epiphany, sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday school, Dead Sea, golden rule, moral, morality, ethics, patriotism, education, atheism, apostasy, conservative (liberal is in), capital punishment, monogamy, abortion, pornography, homosexual, lesbian, fairness, logic, republic, democracy, capitalism, funeral, Decalogue, or Bible. ~Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist

One final snag in the "Bible only" view is this: the Bible itself teaches that moral truths are revealed outside the Scriptures. ~C. Stephen Layman, The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the Foundation of Ethics

Remember that millions of Christians still base their belief in a God upon the words of the Bible, which is a collection of the most flabbergasting fictions ever imagined - by men, too, who had lawless but very poor and crude imagination. Ingersoll and numerous other critics have shot the Christian holy book full of holes. It is worthless and proves nothing concerning the existence of a God. ~E. Haldeman-Julius, The Meaning Of Atheism

If the Bible is telling the truth, then God is either untruthful or incompetent. If God is truthful, then the Bible is either untruthful or erroneous. ~Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian

As it happens, Josephus, who mentions John the Baptist, does not mention Jesus. There is, to be sure, a paragraph in his history of the Jews which is devoted to Jesus, but it interrupts the flow of the discourse and seems suspiciously like an afterthought. Scholars generally believe this to have been an insertion by some early Christian editor who, scandalized that Josephus should talk of the period without mentioning the Messiah, felt the insertion to be a pious act. ~Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Guide To The Bible

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

One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this. ~Fredrich Nietzsche

Science:

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ~J. Robert Oppenheimer, Life, 10 October 1949

The truths which God revealed have been overthrown by the truths which man has discovered. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911

Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as sentimental wishful thinking. ~P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science," Nature's Imagination, edited by John Cornwell, 1995

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science. ~Heinz Pagels, The Dreams of Reason

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. ~Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood. ~Elbert Hubbard

The chief characteristic of the religion of science is that it works. ~Isaac Asimov

Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny. Through fear of being shown to be vacuous, religion denies the awesome power of human comprehension. It seeks to thwart, by encouraging awe in things unseen, the disclosure of the emptiness of faith. Religion, in contrast to science, deploys the repugnant view that the world is too big for our understanding. Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great questions of being to rational discussion, to discussion with the prospect of resolution and elucidation. Science, above all, respects the power of the human intellect. Science is the apotheosis of the intellect and the consummation of the Renaissance. Science respects more deeply the potential of humanity than religion ever can. ~P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science," Nature's Imagination, edited by John Cornwell, 1995

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it. ~Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Science is the record of dead religions. ~The Oscariana of Oscar Fingall O'Flaherty Will Wilde [1856-1900] for George Bernard Shaw

Separation of Church and State:

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion - except for the sect that can win political power. ~Supreme Court Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson, dissenting opinion in Zorach v. Clauson (343 US 306 - 1952)

The United States is not a Christian nation. It is a great nation with Christians, among others, in it. But our greatness is based on the fact that there is no official religion. ~Senator Lowell Weicker

So many Christians long for integration of church and state because they know it would be a Christian influence on government and politics. But would they still want religion's interference in the state if that religion were Buddhism or some other belief system that differed from their own? If the government were run by Muslim tenets, they'd be crying out for separation of church and state just as atheists always have. ~T. Sachs

The greatest achievement ever made in the cause of human progress is the total and final separation of church and state. If we have nothing else to boast of, we could lay claim with justice that the first among the nations we of this country made it an article of organic law that the relations between man and his maker were a private concern, into which other men have no right to intrude. To measure the stride thus made for the Emancipation of the race, we have only to look back over the centuries that have gone before us, and recall the dreadful persecutions in the name of religion that have filled the world. ~David Dudley Field, 1805-1894

I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. ~Original Pledge of Allegiance, 1892

It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon that book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them. ~Frank Herbert, Dune

Give the church a place in the Constitution, let her touch once more the sword of power, and the priceless fruit of all ages will turn to ashes on the lips of men. ~Robert G. Ingersoll, Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1

In addition, the New York Supreme Court, in a well known case (Miami Military Institute v. Leff 129 Misc. 481, 220 N.Y.S. 799, 810) said of the principle of religious freedom that it, 'has always been regarded by the American people as the very heart of its national life.' This would be difficult to maintain in a democracy without institutional separation of church and state. ~Anson Phelps Stokes, Church And State In The United States Vol. I

Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law. Government may not interfere with organized or individual expressions of belief or disbelief. Propagation of belief - or even of disbelief - in the supernatural is protected, whether in church or chapel, mosque or synagogue, tabernacle or meeting-house. ~Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court justice, majority decision, Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 1940

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote - where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference - and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. ~John F. Kennedy

Taxation & Money:

Church tax exemption means that we all drop our money in the collection boxes, whether we go to church or not and whether we are interested in the church or not. It is systematic and complete robbery, from which none of us escapes. ~E. Haldeman-Julius, The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life

Churches should look to their members and friends only for the financing of their undertakings, and no church should engage in any undertaking, no matter how laudable it may be, that its members and friends are unable or unwilling to finance. ~Senator Sam Ervin

The divorce between church and state ought to be absolute. It ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no church property anywhere, in any state, or in any nation, should be exempt from taxation, for if you exempt the church property of any church organization, to that extent you impose tax upon the whole community. ~U.S. President James A. Garfield, address to Congress

The money man gives to get him into heaven is what he ought to use to improve the earth. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays

It takes the shingles from the widow's cottage to put paint on the house of God. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays

Send me money, send me green, Heaven you will meet, Make a contribution and you'll get a better seat. ~Metallica

Conformity & Thinking Quotes

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary. ~Albert Einstein

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. ~Bertrand RussellNot all those who wander are lost. ~J.R.R. Tolkien

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. ~Albert Einstein

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something in your life. ~Winston Churchill

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. ~Voltaire

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. ~J.K. Galbraith

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them. ~George Bernard Shaw

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. ~Mark Twain

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common. ~John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

This is how humans are: we question all our beliefs, except for the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question. ~Orson Scott Card

Doubt is healthy. It tests one's convictions. ~From the movie HauntedToo often we...enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. ~John F. Kennedy

Before you can break out of prison, you must first realize you're locked up. ~Unknown

One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints. ~ProverbI

t is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ~Herman Melville

We need - and should encourage and honour - not only discoverers of facts hitherto unknown but explorers of ideas and rethinkers of values. ~Walter Moberly, The Crisis in the University

If you don't control your mind, someone else will. ~John Allston

Be neither a conformist or a rebel, for they are really the same thing. Find your own path, and stay on it. ~Paul Vixie

Be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out. ~Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

The problem with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than their minds. ~Walter Duranty

I guess I've spent my life listening to what wasn't being said. ~Eli Khamarov, America Explained!

Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labeled categories. Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions! ~W.J. Reichmann

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education. ~Wilson Mizner

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. ~Eric Hoffer

If you keep doing things like you've always done them, what you'll get is what you've already got. ~Unknown

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory. ~Paul Fix

When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders. ~Veterans Fast for Life

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom. ~George Bernard Shaw

What we call human nature in actuality is human habit. ~Jewel, Pieces of You

Never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution. ~Raymond E. Feist

It's a rash man who reaches a conclusion before he gets to it. ~Jacob Levin

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. ~Clarence Darrow

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature. ~George Bernard Shaw

Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us - and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along. ~Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection

My theory is that the hardest work anyone does in life is to appear normal. ~From the movie Ed TV

I don't rent space to anyone in my head. ~Anonymous man on Candid Camera, answering Allen Funt's question about why he had not gotten upset

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn, 1881

Only dead fish swim with the stream. ~Malcolm Muggeridge

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking. ~Steve Allen

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ~George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

Just because something is tradition doesn't make it right. ~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps. ~H.L. Mencken

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything. ~Alexander Hamilton

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. ~Fritz Perls

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. ~Anatole France

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are. ~Quentin Crisp

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it - even if I have said it - unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. ~Buddha

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. ~Juan Ramon Jimenez

Emancipate yourself from mental slaveryNone but ourselves can free our minds.~Bob Marley

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. ~John Cage

No. ~President Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy, when asked if she had any message for the children of America

The most damaging phrase in the language is: "It's always been done that way." ~Grace Hopper

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them. ~Albert Einstein, letter to Sigmund Freud, 30 July 1932

The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone. ~Henrik IbsenConformity is that jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. ~John F. Kennedy

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. ~Niels Bohr

Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. ~Ambrose Bierce

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. ~Voltaire

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model. ~Vincent Van Gogh

If you believe everything you read, you better not read. ~Japanese proverb

I merely observe that all living things are manipulated. As long as there is a will, it is bent and twisted constantly. Only the dead are allowed the luxury of freedom, and then only because they want nothing, and therefore can't be thwarted. ~Orson Scott Card

You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader. ~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

I'm not sure I want popular opinion on my side - I've noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts. ~Bethania McKenstry

What luck for rulers, that men do not think. ~Adolph Hitler

If...the machine of government...is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. ~Bertrand Russell

The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity. ~Thomas Szasz

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. ~Albert Einstein

Never assume the obvious is true. ~William Safire

We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles. ~Mark Twain

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say. ~Marshall McLuhan

History is particularly important in throwing light on the source of our attitudes about sex because many of the assumptions we make are not necessarily scientific or rational but holdovers of past belief systems that are no longer held by modern society. ~Vern BulloughA great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ~William James

To be a genuine individualist requires a great deal of strength and courage. It is never easy to chart new territory, to cross new frontiers, or to introduce subtle shadings to an established color. ~Toller Cranston

To be a fashionable woman is to know yourself, know what you represent, and know what works for you. To be "in fashion" could be a disaster on 90 percent of women. You are not a page out of Vogue. ~Unknown

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others! My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it; and were it, I'd not do so. ~Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade

Integrity has no need of rules. ~Albert Camus

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. ~George Bernard Shaw

Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to. ~Howard Mumford Jones

My uncle ordered popoversfrom the restaurant's bill of fare.And, when they were served,he regarded them with a penetrating stare.Then he spoke great words of wisdomas he sat there on that chair:"To eat these things," said my uncle,"You must exercise great care.You may swallow down what's solid,but you must spit out the air!"And as you partake of the world's bill of fare,that's darned good advice to follow.Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.And be careful what you swallow.~Theodore Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), from a commencement address

What makes you think that human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their "beliefs." The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is a self-congratulatory delusion. ~Michael Crichton, The Lost World

Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was. ~Margaret Mitchell

Civilization & Culture Quotes

Civilization & Culture
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. ~Sigmund Freud

Culture is roughly anything we do and the monkeys don't. ~Lord Raglan

We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs. ~Syrus

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public. ~Bryan White

Progress might have been all right once but it has gone on too long. ~Ogden Nash

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. ~Henry David Thoreau

We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. ~Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. ~Albert Einstein

When you can't do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing. ~Lois McMaster Bujold

K is for "Kenghis Khan." He was a very nice person. History has no record of him. There is a moral in that, somewhere. ~Harlan Ellison, From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet

The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race. ~Don Marquis

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. ~Theodore Roosevelt

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. ~Richard P. Feynman

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills. ~Voltaire, letter to Count Schomberg, 31 August 1769

Codi: Gives you the willies, doesn't it? The thought of raising kids in a place where the front yard ends in a two-hundred-foot drop? [referring to cliff dwellings]Loyd: No worse than raising up kids where the front yard ends in a freeway.~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

One...gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion. It is, of course, natural to assume that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of civilization itself but are determined by the imperfections of the cultural forms which have so far been developed. ~Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. ~Frederic Bastiat, The Law

If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn. ~Andrew Mason

There are many humorous things in the world: among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages. ~Mark Twain

Society is a made-up formula of what we are supposed to be, kept alive by those who believe in it.... I laugh in the ugly face of society, with all its fabricated dimensions. ~Christina Gerogiannis

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. ~Oscar Wilde

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. ~Charles Darwin

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual. ~John Muir, letter to J.B. McChesney, 19 September 1871

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. ~B.F.Skinner

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct. ~Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Civilization is what makes you sick. ~Paul Gauguin

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson