Greg's quotes

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"People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along."
— Stephen Jay Gould

6 people liked it

"Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love."
— John Steinbeck

178 people liked it

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."
— Christopher Hitchens

18 people liked it

" I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."
— Albert Einstein

tags: god, rational, religion, thinking
72 people liked it

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
— Noam Chomsky

tags: belief, believe, despise, expression, freedom, freedom-of-expression
95 people liked it

"I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world."
— Oscar Wilde

97 people liked it

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think that it is rather vain."
— Oscar Wilde

17 people liked it

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

tags: aesthetics
40 people liked it

"The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions."
— Noam Chomsky

tags: education, education-system, instituions
54 people liked it

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
— Christopher Hitchens

tags: reason, science, skeptic
100 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
42 people liked it

"The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement."
— Christopher Hitchens (Letters to a Young Contrarian)

15 people liked it

"To "choose" dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid. "
— Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)

5 people liked it

"I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs."
— Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation)

27 people liked it

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

tags: bush, george, god, religion, w-
94 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
422 people liked it

"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."
— Richard Dawkins

207 people liked it

"There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it."
— Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)

66 people liked it

"Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time."
— Richard Dawkins

tags: dawkins, institutions, religion, richard
53 people liked it

"Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one."
— Richard Dawkins

45 people liked it

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."
— John Steinbeck

tags: politics, war
134 people liked it

"Anything that just costs money is cheap."
— John Steinbeck

tags: value
58 people liked it

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

42 people liked it

"A man without words is a man without thought."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

tags: wisdom
28 people liked it

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."
— David Hume (A Treatise of Human Nature)

tags: philosophy
40 people liked it

"Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness."
— David Hume

13 people liked it

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. "
— David Hume (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)

5 people liked it

"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."
— John Locke

tags: knowledge, reading, thinking
31 people liked it

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it."
— William Faulkner

17 people liked it

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
— Herman Melville

tags: success
18 people liked it

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
— Søren Kierkegaard

tags: future, life, past, reflection, understanding
155 people liked it

"Once you label me you negate me."
— Søren Kierkegaard

tags: labeling, stereotyping
45 people liked it

"There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming."
— Søren Kierkegaard

10 people liked it

"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."
— George Orwell

tags: generations, intelligence, wisdom
81 people liked it

"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."
— George Orwell

tags: political, war
36 people liked it

"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
— George Orwell

18 people liked it

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: happiness
747 people liked it

"I drink to make other people more interesting."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: drinking
151 people liked it

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

tags: atheism, inspirational
119 people liked it

"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: listening
84 people liked it

"The world breaks us all. Afterward, some are stronger at the broken places."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: life
66 people liked it

"The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it."
— Ernest Hemingway

48 people liked it

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
— Ernest Hemingway

tags: war
44 people liked it

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

tags: war
58 people liked it

"A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book."
— Ernest Hemingway

12 people liked it

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

tags: war
88 people liked it

"Freedom is what we do with what is done to us."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

tags: freedom
39 people liked it

"If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

18 people liked it

"Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers"
— Voltaire

115 people liked it

"If we believe absurdities we shall commit atrocities."
— Voltaire

64 people liked it

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