My Quotes Page

A reference, mostly for myself, of excellent quotes which I am forever losing in the bowels on my hard drive, to be edited and expanded as I stumble upon new literary gems in the future.

"The failure to measure up hits people very hard. From such a strong desire to be good they feel very far from goodness when they fail."
~Tony Kushner, Angels in America Part I: Millennium Approaches

"Change? Yes, we must change, only show me the Theory, and I will be at the barricades, show me the book of the next Beautiful Theory, and I promise you these blind eyes will see again, just to read it, to devour the text. Show me the words that will reorder the world, or else keep silent."
~Tony Kushner, Angels in America Part II: Perestroika

He, I know - for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as if it were not so. But to me the future is still black and blank - is a vast ignorance, lit at a few causal places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers - shriveled now, and brown and brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.
~H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

BABE. Well, after I shot him, I put the gun down on the patio bench and then I went out into the kitchen and made up a pitcher of lemonade.
BARNETTE. Lemonade?
BABE. Yes, I was dying of thirst. My mouth was just as dry as a bone [...] Then I called out to Zackery. I said, "Zackery, I've made some lemonade. Can you use a glass?"
BARNETTE. Did he he answer? Did you hear an answer?
BABE. No. He didn't answer.
BARNETTE. So what'd you do?
BABE. I poured him a glass anyway and took it out to him [...] And there he was; lying on the rig. He was looking up at me trying to speak words. I said, "What? ...Lemonade? ...You don't want it? Would you like a Coke instead?" Then I got the idea, he was telling me to call on the phone for medical help. So I got on the phone and called up the hospital. I gave my name and address and I told them my husband was shot and he was lying on the floor and there was plenty of blood. I guess that's gonna look kinda bad.
~Beth Henley, Crimes of the Heart

None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.
~Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars [...]
~Jack Kerouac, On the Road

…But in the Bullshit Department, the businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell ya the truth, folks, when it comes to Bullshit, big time, major league BULLSHIT, you have to stand in awe, in awe, of the all time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: RELIGION!…No contest, no contest!!
~George Carlin

…a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests…. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
~Albert Einstein

To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place — not to mention the "ethnic cleansing" presently being performed by Christians in our world — and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women.
~James Randi

…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 F. Roberts

"That's why it's bullshit - because it fits. Human beings are so complex, any theory fits. By fitting, the theory excludes the complexity, so you lose what's 'human.' Theories that fit exclude other theories, and so don't fit. Like religions excluding other religions, preaching peace, leading to war. What fits can't fit. The 'perfect fits' fit the worst."
~Samuel Shem, Mount Misery

Suddenly I understood how "self" was at the center of psychiatry, a whole industry sprung up to use the self of the psychiatrist to solidify the self of the patient, using talk, using drugs - it was all the same. The various theories were an invention of complexities in the face of something that was incredibly simple: making connection. As if they had invented the complexity not only to protect themselves from that connection, but also to make their own "selves" seem special, better or smarter than - any comparative would do - their patients? All these suits of armor and regimented ties, these big black shoes, these laughable words. Make it so complex you need advanced degrees to do it, and only they could do it, charging enormous prices on the perversion of "selfdom," the suicidal white underbelly of the American Dream, to fight tooth and nail not to be with others, or to be like others, but to be special, separated and individuated from others. What bullshit. And all the while it is connections, not self, that heals.
~Samuel Shem, Mount Misery

...that any "self" is made up only and wholly of "nonself" parts, that we can no more use the old way of thinking about "self" and "other" without regard for the mutual connections than we can, at the other end of the spectrum, use the old way of thinking of particles of matter, because the new physics has shown that there are no such things as isolated Newtonian particles like those little plastic balls of organic chemistry, but rather that what we call "particles" of matter are in fact only the mutual relationships among the particles, which means, if you really take that in, that the universe is made not of fundamental particles but of a pliant fabric of mutual co-arisings, of relationships and connections, of the very stuff which we, split off as humans, aspire to rejoin.
-Samuel Shem, Mount Misery

Ubi dubium ibi libertas:
Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
~Latin proverb

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
~Nietzsche

A man said to the Universe, "Sir, I exist."
"Yes," said the Universe, "but that has not created within me a sense of obligation."
~Stephen Crane

A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass, and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts--physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on—remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all!
~Richard Feynman

An appointment is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls. It is important not to confuse the two.
~Terry Practchett, Men at Arms

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
~Voltaire

I envision the day when facts are universally celebrated as God’s native tongue, when evidence is honored as divine clues, and when the thought of looking to the past, rather than the present, for our best understanding of words like “God,” “sin,” “salvation,” “heaven,” and so forth, will be unimaginable.
I long for the day when public revelation is valued above private revelation nearly everywhere, and when day language and night language thrive in their respective domains. Oh, would it come to pass that millions of people wait with eager anticipation for the next revelations from God that appear in journals like Nature and Science. May there come a time when theologians and preachers vie with one another to articulate the most inspiring meanings of such ongoing revelation.
~Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution

"Think of all that has happened here, on this earth. All the blood hot and strong for living, pleasuring, that has soaked back into it. For grieving and suffering too, of course, but still getting something out of it for all that, getting a lot out of it, because after all you don't have to continue to bear what you believe is suffering: you can always choose to stop that, put an end to that. And even suffering and grieving is better than nothing; there is only one thing worse than not being alive, and that's shame. But you can't live forever, and you always wear out life long before you've exhausted the possibilities of living."
~William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses

"There are good men everywhere, at all times. Most men are. Some are just unlucky, because most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a change to be. And I've known some that even circumstances couldn't stop."
-William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
--Marcus Aurelius

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.
-Stephen Hawking

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
-Richard Dawkins

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
-Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
-Richard Dawkins

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point.
-Richard Dawkins


People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.
-George Carlin


You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve.
-Jane Austen