Coenie's quotes

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"The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself. "
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty

6 people liked it

"“We know not through our intellect but through our experience.""
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty

2 people liked it

"The number and richness of man’s signifiers always surpasses the set of defined objects that could be termed signifieds. The symbolic function must always precede its object and does not encounter reality except when it precedes it into the imaginary…"
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty

tags: imagination, symbols
2 people liked it

"A Casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith proves nothing"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

2 people liked it

"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
— Carl Sagan

tags: carl, sagan
74 people liked it

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

tags: skeptic
197 people liked it

"Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man ... living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money."
— George Carlin

tags: atheism, humor, life, religion
532 people liked it

"God will endure for as long as the reasons that brought him into being;
And so will those who deny him."
— Michel Onfray

2 people liked it

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
— Isaac Asimov

50 people liked it

"It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?"
— Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)

4 people liked it

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
— Albert Einstein

8 people liked it

"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
— Albert Einstein

33 people liked it

"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."
— Bill Hicks

33 people liked it

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
— Epicurus

32 people liked it

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
— Karl Marx

16 people liked it

"[Worshipping God] is like fellating someone who intermittently stubs fags out on your head for no good reason. And we all know how unsatisfying that can be."
— Charlie Brooker

2 people liked it

"[God is] a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser , a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, phillicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
— Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)

2 people liked it

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
— Steven Weinberg

15 people liked it

"Alas, some of those crackpots will only be eliminated by something lethal, such as a firing squad. The best we can do unless you want to invoke such lethal force is the segregation - the quarantine, perhaps - of those that pollute the hive mind with their irrational gibberings"
— Andrew Williams

1 person liked it

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: anti-christian, christ, christianity, christians, jesus
916 people liked it

"The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: anti-christian, christianity, love, sensuality, spirituality
19 people liked it

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
— Richard Dawkins

tags: atheism, philosophy
395 people liked it

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."
— Douglas Adams

tags: atheism, intelligence
177 people liked it

"All thinking men are atheists."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

tags: atheism, inspirational
111 people liked it

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." - "
— Gene Roddenberry

tags: atheism, atheist, god, humans, religion
48 people liked it

"[The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."
— Mark Twain

tags: agnosticism, atheism, bible, christianity, mythology, truth
57 people liked it

"Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse."
— Christopher Hitchens

tags: atheism, religion
37 people liked it

"Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature."
— Carl Sagan

tags: atheism, religion
63 people liked it

"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."
— Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer)

tags: atheism, death, inspirational, life
41 people liked it

"The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation."
— Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays)

tags: anarchy, atheism, religion
26 people liked it

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
— Albert Einstein

38 people liked it

"A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one."
— Richard K. Morgan (Broken Angels)

tags: atheism, philosophy, religion
17 people liked it

"Theology is ignorance with wings."
— Sam Harris

tags: atheism, reason, religion
10 people liked it

"I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it."
— Albert Einstein

tags: atheism, atheist, god, religion
6 people liked it

"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

tags: be-yourself, confidence, individuality, those-who-matter
17,685 people liked it

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

tags: einstein, human, humor, infinity, nature, philosophy, science, stupidity, universe
11,690 people liked it

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: books, soul
10,849 people liked it

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

tags: friends, friendship
9,173 people liked it

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: intelligence, self-deprecation
7,328 people liked it

"Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."
— Robert Maynard Hutchins

tags: exercise, humor, laziness
5,793 people liked it

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: inspirational, music, philosophy
5,447 people liked it

"Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company."
— Mark Twain

tags: christian, humor, philosophy, theology
1,901 people liked it

"I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: philosophy
241 people liked it

"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?"
— Richard Dawkins

3 people liked it

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

240 people liked it

"The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: change, mind, nietzsche
136 people liked it

"The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon."
— Kurt Vonnegut

tags: humor, politics
381 people liked it

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: democracy, fascism, liberty, loss, politics, society, totalitarianism, war
192 people liked it

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
— Arthur C. Clarke (Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible)

tags: science, technology
157 people liked it

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny...'"
— Isaac Asimov

tags: science
213 people liked it

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