Jay > Jay's Quotes

“Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed!”
― C. J. Cherryh

“The whole world goes on and on about love. Poets spend their lives writing about it. Everyone thinks it's the most wonderful thing. But, when you mention two guys in love, they forget all that and freak out.”
― Mark A. Roeder, Outfield Menace

“Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“The rash assertion that "God made man in His own image" is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space

“A fanatic who is willing to die for his cause thinks nothing of killing you for his cause.”
― Ben Bova, The Return

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“We've all got trashy friends, but we should choose our trashy friends with more care.”
― Dominick Dunne, People Like Us

“I'm not an athiest. How can you not believe in something that doesn't exist? That's way too convoluted for me.”
― A. Whitney Brown

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

“With the land and possession of America rapidly passing into the hands of a favored few; with great corporations taking the place of individual effort; with the small shops going down before the great factories and department stores; with thousands of men and women in idleness and want; with wages constantly tending to a lower level; ... with bribery and corruption openly charged, constantly reiterated by the press, and universally believed; and above all and more than all, with the
knowledge that the servants of the people, elected to correct abuses,
are bought and sold in legislative halls at the bidding of corporations and individuals: with all these notorious evils sapping the foundations of popular government and destroying personal liberty, some rude awakening must come. And if it shall come, ... when you then look abroad over the ruin and desolation, remember the long years in which the storm was rising, and do not blame the thunderbolt.”
― Clarence Darrow

“Common sense will nearly always stand you in better stead than a slavish adherence to the conventions.”
― M.M. Kaye, Shadow of the Moon

“Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
― Noël Coward

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
― E.M. Forster

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
― E.M. Forster

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“My books have always been safe spaces, sanctuaries for Queer folk, first and foremost, but all are welcome.”
― Andrew Demcak

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“It’s not just that man, supposedly the most intelligent creature in our known universe, in his greed, blind ambition and willful carelessness has chosen to destroy the perfect balance of nature on which his life depends, but he’s committed himself to obliterating intelligence altogether. We have lawmakers who prefer mythology to science, fiction to reality, faith over facts and lies versus the truth. They start wars in the names of all their gods, and wash their hands in the blood of innocents like it’s righteous water. They blatantly and proudly design laws to discriminate and denigrate those who are not like them and base it on fables. They preach hatred, intolerance, and segregation. Rather than bring man together, they want to separate and enslave him. They neither aspire nor inspire. They drag progress backward to the age of ignorance when women had no role but as servant to man, not owning their own bodies, or having choices in their life. And they smile proudly as if their stupidity were a badge of honor. Their minds are closed like steel traps and they are backed by enough money to put the worst of the worst of them in power. It’s fascism under a new banner, guaranteeing a world of suffering rather than progress. They are the cancer eating away not only at the globe we live on, but at civilization itself.”
― Dan Skinner, Xperiment