Josh > Josh's Quotes

“Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic, siphoning away too much of society’s energy to satisfy its frivolous cravings.”
― Alan Weisman, The World Without Us

“Agnostics are just atheists without balls.”
― Stephen Colbert, I Am America

“A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God?”
― Stephen Colbert, I Am America

“I wonder if God cries. Or gets sad, even. Or happy. Or elated. Does he ever have a good belly laugh? Does he sense contentment? Does he feel pride or remorse? Is he stoic? We know from the Old Testament that he experiences bloodthirsty, murderous rage and fierce pride. He imbued mankind with all of these emotions, but it's hard to imagine him feeling any of these. It's almost a little embarrassing to think of him feeling jealousy. Of course he's WAY more advanced and evolved than we are. So I guess the ultimate stage of humanity is when we don't laugh or cry or experience emotion at all. God gave us laughter as a constant remind of what lesser-evolved beings humans are. Stupid humans!”
― David Cross, I Drink for a Reason

“Trinity’s witnesses responded just as those to Apollo 11 would, as J. Robert Oppenheimer remembered: "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent." Oppenheimer later said the he beheld his radiant blooming cloud and thought of Hindu scripture: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Aloud, however, the physicist made the ultimate engineer comment: "It worked.”
― Craig Nelson, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon

“That’s why our TVs are brimming with so much hot man-on-pan action. You can’t channel surf for long without seeing turkey getting stuffed over and over until they finally cut to the gravy shot.”
― Stephen Colbert, America Again

“If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith

“Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.”
― Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

“Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed for us a stage where we made one of the most crucial decisions in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population growth or trying to increase food production, we opted for the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny. The same choice faces us today, with the difference that we now can learn from the past.”
― Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal

“Here’s a hint: It’s not really “news” until they stop running ads.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“First, I must be getting the money on my side, because after magic wanes money is the most powerful thing on earth (followed by weapons that destroy whole cities in a go, and religion—that never goes away, damn it!—and lastly, female actors who do not wear much clothing).”
― Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.