JR'S Free Thought Pages
            No Gods  ~ No Masters   

                                         My Favorite Quotes   

• Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.   - Michel de Montaigne  

• The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do - B. F. Skinner

• Men become civilized not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to  doubt.  -   H.L. Mencken

• People are usually more firmly convinced that their beliefs are precious than that they are true.  - George Santayana

• Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.  - Euripedes

• The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself.   - F. Nietzsche

• Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.   - F. Nietzsche

• When men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken.   - David Hume

• A desire for certainty suggests a willingness to be manipulated.    - Jonathan Ralston Saul

• Reality is that which when you stop believing it, won’t go away.    - Philip K. Dick.

• In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.   - Galileo Galilei

• One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.   - Robert A. Heinlein 

• Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.   - Carl Sagan

• Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the philosophers as false, and by the rulers as useful.   - Seneca             

• What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.    - Alice Walker

• A cult is a religion with no political power.      - Tom Wolfe

• I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.   -  Jules Renard

• A healthy garden of beliefs requires well-nourished roots and tireless pruning.   -  W.V. Quine

• Doubt is not a pleasant mental state -  but certainty is a ridiculous one.    - Voltaire

• As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities - Voltaire

• Humans fear reason, but they ought to fear stupidity - for reason can be hard, but stupidity can be fatal.   - Goethe  

• First we had the land and they had the Bibles;  now we have the Bibles and they have the land.   -  Chief Dan George

• All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few - Stendhal

• The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it - J. Robert Oppenheimer

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

• A philosopher is a black man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. The theologian is the one who finds him.   - Unknown

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