"The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don't belong; it doesn't include me, and it never has. no matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to."
— George Carlin (Brain Droppings)

"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late."
— Émile Michel Cioran

"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."
— Bertrand Russell (Unpopular Essays)

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."
— J.D. Salinger

"I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. "
— Bertrand Russell

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education."
— Bertrand Russell

"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."
— Mark Twain

"I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it."
— George Carlin

"If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid."
— Mark Twain

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

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

"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"
— Mark Twain

"It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed."
— Mark Twain

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
— Mark Twain

"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."
— Mark Twain

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
— Mark Twain

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
— Mark Twain

"Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we"."
— Mark Twain

"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin

"The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept."
— George Carlin

"The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.'"
— George Carlin

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
— Mark Twain

"The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment."
— George Carlin

"Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did."
— George Carlin

"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.'"
— George Carlin

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
— Mark Twain

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
— Carl Gustav Jung

"The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong."
— Carl Gustav Jung

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts."
— Bertrand Russell

"To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it."
— Bertrand Russell (A History of Western Philosophy)

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."
— Bertrand Russell

"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"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

"This was what Bertrand Russell called his 'Ten Commandments' as a teacher.

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worthwhile to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet opposition, even if it should come from your husband, wife or children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority- for victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinion you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence, as you should, the former implies a deeper argument than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness."
— Bertrand Russell

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
— Bertrand Russell

"And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence"
— Bertrand Russell

"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own."
— Bertrand Russell

"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
— Bertrand Russell

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup."
— Bertrand Russell

"There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed."
— Bertrand Russell (Human Society in Ethics and Politics)

"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 Russell

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways."
— Bertrand Russell

"I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)