Fen Labalme

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

— Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just keep your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

— Frank Zappa

religion, rebellion, government, freedom

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

— C. A. R. Hoare

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. To be born means that something which did not exist comes into existence. But the day we are born is not our beginning. It is a day of continuation....

— Thich Nhat Hanh

religion, philosophy, life

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

philosophy, peace, life, government, freedom

If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.

— blue_beetle

information, geeky

Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions ......of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal, ' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.

— Matt Santos

My job is to get to the right answer, not the consensus answer. Sometimes the only way to get there is dissent.

— Eric Schmidt

Always make new mistakes.

— Esther Dyson

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

— Albert Einstein

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

— Albert Einstein

I didn't speak English until I came to Pittsburgh.

— Mario Lemieux

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.

— G.K. Chesterton

We're a road team. We're the Pittsburgh Steelers. We have fans everywhere.

— Troy Polamalu

We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunity.

— Pogo

A little rebellion is a good thing now and then.

— Thomas Jefferson

...it seemed to me we had the kind of awakening that the great religions first intended, and that somehow it involved everybody. There were kids there. There were old people there, and in other parts of the building there were people just dancing and dancing... we had a chance to awaken our hearts, unbound by any particular cultural or religious commitments to this group or that. It seemed to me, and I'm meaning this very seriously, a prime religious experience that transcended all the bondages and definitions of who and what we are that are the curse of the world today. The Deadheads are doing the dance of life, and this, I would say, is the answer to the atom bomb.

— Joseph Campbell

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

— Paulo Freire

freedom, philosophy

War is Terrorism with a Bigger Budget

— sign at the SF peace rally, 1/18/2003

Violence := Any act that reduces self-esteem

— Anonymous

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

— Isaac Asimov

We must trust our own thinking. Trust where we're going. And get the job done.

— Wilma Mankiller

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that enough good men do nothing.

— Edmund Burke

government, rebellion

STRANGE GAME. THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY.

— Joshua

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

Anarchism is a tendency in the history of human thought and action which seeks to identify coercive, authoritarian, and hierarchic structures of all kinds and to challenge their legitimacy -- and if they cannot justify their legitimacy, which is quite commonly the case, to work to undermine them and expand the scope of freedom.

— Noam Chomsky

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

— Sam J. Ervin, Jr.

You cannot simultaneously prepare for and prevent war.

— Albert Einstein

There is no way to peace, peace is the way

— A.J. Muste

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened
about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

— Marianne Williamson

Nuclear war would really set back cable.

— Ted Turner

Ninety percent of life is just showing up.

— Woody Allen

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.

— Dave Barry

The loud little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit will--warily and cautiously--object--at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.'

Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity.

Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--as earlier--but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation--pulpit and all--will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open.

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

— Mark Twain

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine

how good it is:
nor how valuable it is;

nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU.

Keep the channel open . . .
No artist is pleased . . .

There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

— Martha Graham

Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, respect for others and responsibility for all your actions.
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
Spend some time alone every day.
Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
Be gentle with the earth.
Once a year, go some place you've never been before.
Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

— Dalai Lama

We are praying that mankind does wake up and think about the future, for we haven't just inherited this earth from our ancestors, but we are borrowing it from our unborn children.

— Joseph Chasing Horse

If you have time to chatter,

Read a book.

If you have time to read,

Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.

If you have time to walk,

Sing songs and dance.

If you have time to dance,

Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot.

— Nanao Sakaki

If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.

— Woody Allen

I slept and dreamt that life was joy,
I awoke and saw that life was service,
I acted and behold, service was joy.

— Rabindranath Tagore

The problem is not how to wipe out all differences, but how to unite with all differences intact.

— Rabindranath Tagore

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

life, religion

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

government, rebellion

When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Kings and Princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks
The real work of Christmas begins.

To find the lost
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoners
To rebuild the nations
To bring peace among brothers
To make music in the heart.

— Nineteenth Century Quaker Benediction Traditionally Spoken at Christmas

Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire.

— Bruce Sterling

People single me out for being an activist, but I always say that the impulse is inborn - it just needs to be nurtured. It starts when you're little, and you see some kids being unkind to another kid on the bus. Maybe you do something. Maybe you don't. But there was that little hint in your brain that something was wrong, that you weren't comfortable with the situation.

Throughout your life, you have the opportunity to learn from that experience, to react to that little voice inside of you that says something has crossed your moral bottom line, to ignore what others are telling you to do and honor your impulse. The very core of being an activist is being true to yourself.

— Susan Sarandon

Anything is possible, if you don't care who gets the credit.

— Harry Truman

All we are saying is give peace a chance

— John Lennon

All wars are fought for money.

— Socrates

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

— H. L. Mencken

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air however slight lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

— William O. Douglas

They came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a communist;
They came for the socialists, and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist;
They came for the union leaders, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a union leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me.

— Martin Niemoller

The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.

— Molly Ivans

Truth : the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death.

— Richard Childers

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

— George Bernard Shaw

I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'

— Mike Godwin

In the United States we value security more than freedom.

— Hugh Daniels

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much ... to forget it.

— James Madison

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce: with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.

— James Madison

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law," because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

— Thomas Jefferson

The true barriers of our liberty in this country are our state governments...

— Thomas Jefferson

What county can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance.

— Thomas Jefferson

The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers.

— Thomas Jefferson

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.

— Thomas Jefferson

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

— Thomas Jefferson

Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty.

— Benjamin Franklin

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated

— the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized; do you follow that?

In other words, this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of the knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside.

In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos...

— William Gaddis, JR

It's not the bits, it's the about the bits.

— Nicholas Negroponte

When I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean, nothing more and nothing less.

— Humpty Dumpty

What's information really about? It seems to me there's something direly wrong with the "Information Economy." It's not about data, it's about attention. In a few years you may be able to carry the Library of Congress around in your hip pocket. So? You're never gonna read the Library of Congress. You'll die long before you access one tenth of one percent of it. What's important -- increasingly important -- is the process by which you figure out what to look at. This is the beginning of the real and true economics of information. Not who owns the books, who prints the books, who has the holdings. The crux here is access, not holdings. And not even access itself, but the signposts that tell you what to access -- what to pay attention to. In the Information Economy everything is plentiful -- except attention.

— Bruce Sterling

Information is the currency of democracy.

— Thomas Jefferson

National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway.

— Anonymous

Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight diziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dremlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an un-interrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.

— Albert Hofmann

Be compassionate: Don't say "straight", say "psychedelically challenged"!

— Anonymous

We felt the effects of herb were so dangerous that it was better to lie to the american public to save them rather than tell them the truth...

— Partnership for a Drug Free America

Psychedelics often produce psychotic and even violent behavior in those that have never used them.

— Timothy Leary

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual that the use of the drug itself.

— President Jimmy Carter

government, wosd

They're just rules.... They're written in a book, not carved in stone. And even if they were in stone, so what? A bunch of us just made them up.

— Grand Nagus Gint

The U.S. Constitution may not be perfect, but it's better than what we've got now.

— Sandy Shaw

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit . . . . if we appear to seek the unattainable, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.

— the Port Huron Statement, 11-June-1962, Students for a Democratic Society

government, rebellion

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.

— Jerry Garcia

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's not the voting that's Democracy, it's the counting.

— Tom Stoppard

"All I want is peace on earth, good will toward men."
"We're the United States Government. We don't do that sort of thing!"

— from the movie Sneakers

government, peace

Anarchy, it is not the law, it is just a good idea.
Anarchy doesn't mean 'without rules'; it means 'without rulers'.

— Paxus Calta

god forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion . . . the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.

— Thomas Jefferson

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

— Thomas Jefferson

A musician, if he's a messenger, is like a child who hasn't been handled too many times by man, hasn't had too many fingerprints across his brain. That's why music is so much heavier than anything you ever felt.

— Jimi Hendrix

You can bet everything will come to an end. It's going to be ugly and it's going to be a mess, and it's going to be something that somebody did in the name of God....

— Frank Zappa

random, religion

What if this weren't a hypothetical question?

— Unknown

"Makes sense when appended to its own quotation"
makes sense when appended to its own quotation.

— Hume

Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:

The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed car suck).
Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!"

— Traditional

It happens. Sometimes people just explode. Natural causes.

— from Repo Man

An actor as President??

— In Like Flint, 1967

In the Land of The Dark, The Ship of The Sun is pulled by The Grateful Dead

— Egyptian Book of The Dead

Death to the intolerants!

— John Perry Barlow

Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It's a shark riding on an elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they see.

— Jack Handey

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

— Andrew Jackson

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.

— Flash Gordon

I know you believe you understand what it was you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant...

— Anonymous (me?)

It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature human beings ...

— Playboy, January 1983

Submarines, flying boats, robots, talking pictures, radio, television, bouncing radar vibrations off the moon, rocket ships, and atom-splitting -- all in our time. But nobody has yet been able to figure out a music holder for a marching piccolo player.

— Meredith Willson, 1948

As Mahatma Gandhi was boarding a train... journalist: Mahatma, what do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

— Mahatma Gandhi

I've proven who I am so many times before
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And everyone was takin in

— Bruce Cockburn

Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.

Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:

A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
A loss of interest in judging other people.
A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
A loss of interest in conflict.
A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom).
Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
Frequent attacks of smiling.
An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

— Anonymous

How to fix people (listening for engineers :-)

People have really good built in diagnostics.
If you listen well the will tell you what is wrong.
If you listen really well they will hear what is wrong.
If you're an expert listener they will hear what is wrong and realize they no longer need fixing.

— John Pettitt

Womanist: Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. LOVES the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. LOVES the Folk. Loves herself. REGARDLESS.

— Alice Walker

There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney and pass on their way. Now, you must tend that inward fire, wait patiently for the hour when somebody will come and sit down near it -- to stay there maybe?

— Van Gogh

Ego is convinced that Love is dangerous.

— A Course in Miracles

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

— Joseph Campbell

For what we are beginning to wake up to today ...is that we have for millenia structured our social institutions and our systems of values precisely in ways that serve to block, distort, and pervert our enormous human yearning for loving connections.

— Riane Eisler

Love is trust
Love is smell
Love is how you treat someone well under pressure.

— someone on the WELL

When you hold back your Love
Hoping to find more elsewhere,
You learn how to wait,
Not how to Love.

— Peter Rengel

When true giving occurs, you have more afterwards than when you started.

— Peter Rengel

I know you, you're just like me.

— Stan Dale

Truth decays into beauty, while beauty soon becomes merely charm. Charm ends up as strangeness, and even that doesn't last, but up and down are forever.

— The Laws of Physics

To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
To the plumber, any liquid in the glass is potential income.

— John Pettitt

In God we trust -- all others must submit an X.509 certificate.

— Charles Forsythe

Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.

— Arthur C. Clarke

Of course, unless one has a theory, one cannot expect much help from a computer (unless it has a theory)....

— Marvin Minsky

God is real, unless cast to an integer.

— Anonymous

A hacker is any person who derives joy from discovering ways to circumvent limitations.

— Bob Bickford

Because vitually everyone was against us ... I knew we were on the right track.

— Dr. Marshall T. Rose

/*
 * we mean to emit floating-point code. figure out what we want to do,
 * figure out who we are, and do the right thing.
 */

— comment from the portable C-compiler

We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.

— Werner Von Braun

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.

— Steve Wozniak

    Welcome to the Adventure shell!
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike> fight shell
The shell hits! -more- you lose a file

— Dave Morrison

The lack of these features merely serves to make systems programming for the the Transputer an interesting exercise.

— The Helios Operating System, Prentice-Hall, 1989

Instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.

— FORTRAN manual

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

— Pablo Picasso

Computer software must not only work, it must also appear to work.

— Carl Hewitt

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

— Rich Cook

In our view, everybody is a potential partner -- until they shoot at us.

— Steve Case

Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according everybody is the "most reliable Windows ever." To me, this is like saying that asparagus is "the most articulate vegetable ever."

— Dave Barry

Microsoft is known generally for imitation rather than innovation. When Microsoft does something new, its purpose is strategic -- not to improve computing for the users, but to close off future alternatives for them.

— RMS

That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them.

— Karen Hargrove

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

— Robert Wilensky

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.

— Nathaniel Borenstein

We can walk our road together if our goals are the same.
We can run alone and free if we persue a different aim.

— Install Notes, NetBSD 0.8, 1993

A program is a spell cast over a computer, turning input into error messages.

— Anonymous

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

— Raymond Chandler

LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.

— Alan Perlis

Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.

— Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming

ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.

— Anonymous

We all enter this world in the same way: naked; screaming; soaked in blood. But if you live your life right, that kind of thing doesn't have to stop there.

— Dana Gould

Man plans, God laughs.

— John Perry Barlow

You can believe anything you want. The universe is not obliged to keep a straight face.

— Solomon Short

Trust in Allah,
and tie your camel!

— Sufi saying

The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.

— Woody Allen

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.

— Han Solo

You gave your life to become the person you are right now. Was it worth it?

— Richard Bach

life, philosophy

It is possible to commit no mistakes, and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.

— Jean-Luc Picard

life, philosophy

I'm glad you asked, son. Being popular is the most important thing in the world.

— Homer Simpson

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

— George Bernard Shaw

Be ashamed to die till you have won some victory for humanity.

— Horace Mann

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

— Robert F. Kennedy

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

— George Bernard Shaw

If science always insists that a new order must be immediately fruitful, or that it has some new predictive power, then creativity will be blocked. New thoughts generally arise with a play of the mind, and the failure to appreciate this is actually one of the major blocks to creativity. Thought is generally considered to be a sober and weighty business. But here it is being suggested that creative play is an essential element in forming new hypotheses and ideas. Indeed, thought which tries to avoid play is in fact playing false with itself. Play, it appears, is the very essence of thought.

This notion of falseness that can creep into play of thought is shown in the etymology of the words illusion, delusion, and collusion, all of which have as their Latin root ludere, "to play." So illusion implies playing false with perception; delusion, playing false with thought; collusion, playing false together in order to support each other's illusions and delusions. When thought plays false, the thinker may occasionally recognize this fact, and express it in the above words. Unfortunately, however, our English language does not have a word for thought which plays true. Perhaps this is a reflection of a work ethic which does not consider the importance of play and suggests that work itself is noble while play is, at best, recreational and, at worst, frivolous and nonserious. However, to observe children at play is to realize the serious intensity of their energy and concentration.

— David Bohm and F. David Peat

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

— Albert Einstein

Everything should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler!

— Albert Einstein

If only I had known, I would have been a locksmith.

— Albert Einstein

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

— Albert Einstein

Music is the timeless experience of constant change.

— Jerry Garcia

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors.
Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits.
Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Mathematics is the music of the mind. Music is the mathematics of the soul.

— Moe Zimmerberg

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.

— Introduction to A Course In Miracles

Transcend, Motherfucker, Transcend!

— Cindy Lou Cosgrove

That the birds of worry and care fly above your head,
This you cannot change;
But that they build nests in your hair,
This you can prevent.

— Chinese proverb

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

— Santayana

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use.

— Galileo

philosophy, religion

We are four dimensional beings in three dimensional bodies, looking out two-dimensional windshields.

— Cowboy Neal at the Wheel

Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother and are not all living things with feet and roots their children?

— Black Elk

Heaven is exactly like where you are now, only much, much better.

— Laurie Anderson

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

— Maslow

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

— Robert A. Heinlein

You can observe a lot by just watching.

— Yogi Berra

Second from the right and straight on 'til morning.

— Peter Pan

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

— Bertrand Russell

You'll see it when you believe it.

— Wayne Dyer

When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything in the universe.

— John Muir

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

— Charles Dickens

A slave is one who waits for someone else to free him.

— Rosellen Brown

Breathe into the hard times.

— Dahlia

If you don’t have a sense of humor about it, then it isn’t funny.

— Wavy Gravy

You can't change the world
But you can change your perception of the world
And if you can change your perception of the world
Then you can change the world!

— Barry Brilliant

Do you know why angels can fly?

Because they take themselves lightly!

— Anonymous

There is only one real blasphemy: the refusal of joy.

— Paul Rudnick

Life is uncertain, always eat dessert first.

— Ernestine Ulmer

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of man as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

— Helen Keller

How You Are Does Not Matter.
What matters is How You Are in Relation to How You Are.

— Peter Rengel

May you live all the days of your life.

— Jonathan Swift

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage. (regarding the fall of the Athenian Republic)

— Alexander Tyler

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

— Abraham Lincoln

government, philosophy

The single most powerful faction in politics today is not liberalism or conservatism, but privilege and corruption.

— Paul Kienitz

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretions.

— Thomas Jefferson

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

— Lyndon Baines Johnson

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

— Voltaire

It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.

— Benjamin Franklin

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

— C.A. Beard

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

— Abraham Lincoln

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

— Abraham Lincoln

Gone are the far-off days of worthy debate. Politics today has to be sold to a viewer whose finger is poised over the television zapper. The 1988 campaign set new lows … [it] also demonstrated the power of image-making in changing a result.

— The Economist

Facts are a better basis for decisions than ideology.

— Howard Dean

Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism means peace and tranquility to all.

— August Spies

Anarchism is a tendency in the history of human thought and action which seeks to identify coercive, authoritarian, and hierarchic structures of all kinds and to challenge their legitimacy -- and if they cannot justify their legitimacy, which is quite commonly the case, to work to undermine them and expand the scope of freedom.

— Noam Chomsky

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

QUESTION AUTHORITY! THINK FOR YOURSELF.... Before it becomes illegal.

— Anonymous

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

— Frank Zappa

Politics. From the greek "poly," meaning many, and "ticks," a small, annoying bloodsucker.

— Dave Barry

When you replace speed cameras with duds, what you're doing is giving people a false sense of insecurity.

— Bill Lockyer

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

— Seneca, 65 AD

It would be easy for us, if we do not learn to understand the world and appreciate the rights, privileges and duties of all other countries and peoples, to represent in our power the same danger to the world that fascism did.

— Ernest Hemingway

“My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.”

— George Santayana

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

— Stephen Roberts

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

— Anonymous

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.

— Anonymous

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

— Douglas Adams

The Bible - A Fairytale book of rules brainwashing millions. Obliviously used to help create war, kill, hate, judge and discriminate.

— Anonymous

Today’s religion will be the future’s mythology. Both believed at one time by many; but proved wrong by the clever.

— Steven Crocker

Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing.

— Anonymous

Religion is like a virus that affects the behaviour of its host in such a way as to propagate itself further.

— Jack Pritchard

Jesus hardly made the greatest sacrifice. He knew he would be resurrected anyway.

— Anonymous

Most religions prophecy the end of the world and then consistently work together to ensure that these prophecies come true.

— Anonymous

To really be free, You need to be free in the mind.

— Alexander Loutsis

Fundamentalism, of any type, due to its prerequisite lack of intelligent thought, could prove to be the worst weapon of mass destruction, of all.

— David J. Constable

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk.

— Thomas Edison

I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

— Daniel Boorstin

Animals do not have gods, they are smarter than that.

— Ronnie Snow

Atheists will celebrate life, while you’re in church celebrating death.

— Anonymous

If we expect God to subscribe to one religion at the exclusion of all the others, then we should expect damnation as a matter of chance. This should give Christians pause when expounding their religious beliefs, but it does not.

— Sam Harris

If God created the world, then who created god? and who created whoever created god? So somewhere along the line something had to just be there. So why can’t we just skip the idea of god and go straight to earth?

— Ryan Hanson

Religion is the opiate of the masses.

— Karl Marx

The finality of death is the coldest truth one must face. Religion makes the perfect distraction.

— Anonymous

If god is the alpha and the omega. The begining and the end, knows what has passed and what is to come, like it states in the bible, why do people pray and think it will make any difference.

— Mark Fairclough

The characters and events depicted in the damn bible are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

— Penn and Teller

What has been Christianity’s fruits? Superstition, Bigotry and Persecution.

— James Madison

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

— Richard Dawkins

Man has always required an explanation for all of those things in the world he did not understand. If an explanation was not available, he created one.

— Jim Crawford

I have no need for religion, I have a conscience.

— Anonymous

I wonder who got the shit job of scouring the planet for the 15000 species of butterfly or the 8800 species of ant they eventually took on board Noah’s Ark. But at least we got that magical rainbow for all their trouble.

— Azura Skye

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.

— Robert Pirsig

The inspiration of the bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it.

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

— Chapman Cohen

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power but absolute power is corrupt only in the hands of the absolutely faithful.

— Anonymous

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

— Penn Jillette

Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions.

— Frater Ravus

philosophy, religion

I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to hell if I’m ‘bad’.

— Mike Fuhrman

No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.

— Annie Wood Besant

I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose

— Clarence Darrow

Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.

— Sam Harris

If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.

— Alexandre Dumas

Gods dont kill people. People with Gods kill people.

— David Viaene

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.

— John Buchan

If all the Christians who have called other Christians “not really a Christian” were to vanish, there’d be no Christians left.

— Anonymous

Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived.

— Isaac Asimov

People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)

— Douglas Adams

“There are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t an argument against atheism, it’s an argument against foxholes.

— James Morrow

peace, philosophy, religion

A believer states everything must have a creator but fail to say how he was created.

— Anonymous

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

— Richard Dawkins

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

— George Carlin

History teaches us that no other cause has brought more death than the word of god.

— Giulian Buzila

Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.

— Robert G. Ingersoll

They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to religious belief and it’s a good thing.

— Steven Weinberg

When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.

— Sigmund Freud

Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.

— Anonymous

Religion does three things quite effectively: Divides people, Controls people, Deludes people.

— Carlespie Mary Alice McKinney

Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Remember, Jesus would rather constantly shame gays than let orphans have a family.

— Steven Colbert

He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.

— William Drummond

It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

— Mark Twain

I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.

— Douglas Adams

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

— Robert A Heinlein

A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it.

— David Stevens

I’m a polyatheist - there are many gods I don’t believe in.

— Dan Fouts

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

— Epicurus

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

— Bertrand Russell

Of all religions the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

— Voltaire

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

— Mark Twain

To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I wouldn’t be wrong to ask.

— Geoff Mather

God should be executed for crimes against humanity.

— Bryan Emmanuel Gutierrez

Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.

— Don Hirschberg

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.

— Anonymous

As far as I can tell from studying the scriptures, all you do in heaven is pretty much just sit around all day and praise the Lord. I don’t know about you, but I think that after the first, oh, I don’t know, 50,000,000 years of that I’d start to get a little bored.

— Rick Reynolds

What’s “God”? Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God’s the guy that ignores you.

— Steve Buscemi (From the movie “The Island”)

You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate.

— Richard A. Weatherwax

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

— Stephen Roberts

On the first day, man created God.

— Anonymous

It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible.

— George W. Foote

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

— Christopher Hitchens

Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.

— Richard Dawkins

Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the Creator of human intelligence.

— Anonymous

All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science.

— Matthew Arnold

People ask me what I think about that woman priest thing. What, a woman priest? Women priests. Great, great. Now there’s priests of both sexes I don’t listen to.

— Bill Hicks

It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect. he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all‐knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.

— Karen Armstrong

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

— Richard Dawkins

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

— Francis Bacon

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.

— Anonymous

The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

— Delos B. McKown

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

— Susan B. Anthony

Since the Bible and the church are obviously mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust them to tell us where we are going?

— Anonymous

The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.

— Abu’l‐Ala al Ma’arri

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence.

— Doug McLeod

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

— Steven Weinberg

government, religion

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.

— Edward Abbey

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

— Isaac Asimov

Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends.

— Woody Allen

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

— Anonymous

philosophy, religion

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

— Seneca the Younger

government, religion

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.

— Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

— Isaac Asimov

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.

— Gene Roddenberry

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

— Frank Lloyd Wright

Faith means not wanting to know what is true.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

— George Bernard Shaw

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.

— Jeremy S. Anderson