Phil > Phil's Quotes

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
― Socrates

“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.”
― Donny Miller

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“A truth is not hard to kill, and a lie well told is immortal.” - Mark Twain”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Those who thus seek to screen an idol from criticism only betray their own suspicions about the worthiness of the totem they worship.”
― Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition?

“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, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“This is the mentality of a cult, in which fantastical beliefs are flaunted as proof of one's piety. That mentality cannot coexist with an esteem for truth, and I believe it is responsible for some of the unfortunate trends in recent intellectual life.”
― Stephen Pinker

“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

“One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“If Jesus had been an actual historical figure we have a thorny paradox. Either this Jesus was a remarkable individual who said and did a host of amazing, revolutionary things – but no one outside his fringe cult noticed for over a century. Or he didn’t – and yet shortly after his death, tiny communities of worshipers that cannot agree about the most basic facts of his life spring up, scattered all across the empire. The truth is inescapable: there simply could never have been a historical Jesus.”
― David Fitzgerald

“So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.”
― John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women