Appendix Quotes

“*Appendix usually means "small outgrowth from large intestine," but in this case it means "additional information accompanying main text." Or are those really the same things? Think carefully before you insult this book.”
― Pseudonymous Bosch, The Name of This Book Is Secret

“If this is victory, then our hands are too small to hold it.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Love is like the human appendix. You take it for granted while it's there, but when it's suddenly gone you're forced to endure horrible pain that can only be alleviated through drugs.”
― Reverend Jen, Live Nude Elf

“Even if we have a reliable criterion for detecting design, and even if that criterion tells us that biological systems are designed, it seems that determining a biological system to be designed is akin to shrugging our shoulders and saying God did it. The fear is that admitting design as an explanation will stifle scientific inquiry, that scientists will stop investigating difficult problems because they have a sufficient explanation already.

But design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term "junk DNA." Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through a long, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as "junk" merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. For instance, in a recent issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, John Bodnar describes how "non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development." Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it.

Or consider vestigial organs that later are found to have a function after all. Evolutionary biology texts often cite the human coccyx as a "vestigial structure" that hearkens back to vertebrate ancestors with tails. Yet if one looks at a recent edition of Gray’s Anatomy, one finds that the coccyx is a crucial point of contact with muscles that attach to the pelvic floor. The phrase "vestigial structure" often merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. The human appendix, formerly thought to be vestigial, is now known to be a functioning component of the immune system.”
― William A. Dembski

“You who have defeated us say to yourselves that Babylon is fallen and its works have been overturned. I say to you still that man remains on trial, each man in his own dock. Each man is a little war.”
― Frank Herbert

“Stories can actually rearrange continents if they're told long enough.”
― Scott McClanahan, Crapalachia: A Biography of a Place

“I wonder if the small town isn’t, with some lovely exceptions, a social appendix?”
― Sinclair Lewis, Main Street

“An Ex is like an inflamed appendix. It caused u a lot of pain, n after it was removed, u found out that u didn't need it anyway.”
― Nitya Prakash