"Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."
— Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
— Mark Twain

"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane."
— Philip K. Dick

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
— Ernest Hemingway (Death in the Afternoon)

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

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."
— Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)

"No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself."
— John Steinbeck (The Winter of Our Discontent)

"It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
— Isaac Asimov

"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."
— Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)

"Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig."
— Leon Bloy

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

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."
— Arthur C. Clarke

"One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion"
— Arthur C. Clarke

"The Earth Forgives

The Earth forgives the Miner's blast
That rends her crust and burns her skin;
The centuries bring Trees again,
And water, and the Fish therein.

The Deer at length forgives the Wolf
That tears his throat and drinks his blood;
His bones return to soil, and feed
The trees that flower and fruit and seed.

And underneath those shady trees
The Wolf will spend her restful days;
And then the Wolf in turn will pass,
And turn to grass the Deer will graze.

All Creatures know that some must die
That all the rest may take and eat;
Sooner or later, all transform
Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat.

But Man alone seeks Vengefulness,
And writes his abstract Laws on stone;
For this false Justice he has made,
He tortures limb and crushes bone.

Is this the image of a god?
My tooth for yours, your eye for mine?
Oh, if Revenge did move the stars
Instead of Love, they would not shine.

We dangle by a flimsy thread,
Our little lives are grains of sand:
The Cosmos is a tiny sphere
Held in the hollow of God's hand.

Give up your anger and your spite,
And imitate the Deer, the Tree;
In sweet Forgiveness find your joy,
For it alone can set you free.


From The God's Gardeners Oral Hymnbook"
— Margaret Atwood (The Year of the Flood)

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe."
— Carl Sagan

"Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion."
— Jon Stewart