Quotations

Note: not quotes. Quote is a verb. I’m going to quote some people now; if anything is wrongly-attributed or if you know to whom something should be attributed, let me know!

Never make someone a priority who only makes you an option

To the world you are just one person, but to one person you may be the world

Contentment is not the fulfilment of what you want, it is the realisation of how much you already have

Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience

Fur coats are worn by beautiful animals and ugly people

————-

Better to be deprived of food for three days, than of tea for one

- Chinese Proverb

A mighty pain to love it is, and ’tis a pain that pain to miss but of all the pains, the greatest pain is to love, but love in vain.

- Abraham Crowley

We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together

- Carl Sagan

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored

- Aldous Huxley

If you go through life with your head in the sand, all people will see is an arse

- Susan, My Family

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light…
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

- W.B. Yeats

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind

- Dr. Seuss

If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice

- Davan, to Seldon (Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov)

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it

- Henry Ford

There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe… can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

- Richard Feynman

By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out

[Evolution is] a theory in a special philosophical sense of science, but in terms of ordinary laymen’s use of language, it’s a fact, … Evolution is a fact in the same sense that it’s a fact that the Earth is round and not flat, [that] the Earth goes round the Sun. Both those are also theories, but they’re theories that have never been disproved and never will be disproved

- Richard Dawkins

Unfortunately most criticism is by poseurs. They use their comments about someone else’s work as a platform on which to strike poses. What they’re really saying is: “Look at me! Look at me!”

- Frank Herbert (1965)

Where knowledge ends, religion begins

- Benjamin Disraeli

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful

- Seneca the Younger (4BCE- 65CE)

If science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, Buddhism must change accordingly. We should always adopt a view that accords with the facts.

- Dalai Lama

To see through the eye of faith is to shut the eye of reason

- Benjamin Franklin

I don’t think we are here for anything, we’re just products of evolution. You can say “Gee, your life is meaningless if you don’t think there’s a purpose” but I’m anticipating a good lunch

- James Watson

I’m not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful

Religion forces nice people to do unkind things, and also makes intelligent people say stupid things

- Christopher Hitchens

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion

- Steven Weinberg

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself

- Richard Burton (same birthday as me!)

You should just get a van. With a van, it’s like you’ve got an MBA, but you’ve also got a fucking van. You’re not just a man anymore – you are a man with a van. You get a van, Jez, we could be men with ven.

- Super Hans, Peep Show