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Meditation 325
Quotations XXIX

"I hate quotations, tell me what you know." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

But as some people do like quotations and think they can be useful in succinctly communicating an opinion, we will publish a selection occasionally, mostly but not entirely relevant. This is the twenty-ninth in an ongoing series.

  1. I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.." Denis Diderot

  2. To be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. Eric Hoffer

  3. No kingdom has ever suffered as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ. Baron de Montesquieu

  4. It is easier to dream up a system than to work out a theory. Georges-Louis Leclerc

  5. Theological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances; it is the parent of fanacticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind. Voltaire

  6. The various systems of doctrine that have held dominion over man have been demonstrated to be true beyond all question by rationalists of such power - to name only a few - as Aquinas and Calvin and Hegel and Marx. Guided by these master hands the intellect has shown itself more deadly than cholera or bubonic plague and far more cruel. The incompatibility with one another of all the great systems of doctrine might surely be have expected to provoke some curiosity about their nature. Wilfred Trotter

  7. Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy. George Carlin

  8. It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties. Alfred North Whitehead

  9. "In God We Trust." It is the choicest compliment that has ever been paid us, and the most gratifying to our feelings. It is simple, direct, gracefully phrased; it always sounds well -- "In God We Trust." I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true. Mark Twain

  10. It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him. Arthur C. Clarke

  11. Churchmen are interested in keeping the people ignorant. I call piety a malady of the heart. Baron de Montesquieu

  12. Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. But what shall we substitute in it's place? you say. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in it's place? Voltaire

  13. Who says life is sacred - God? Hey, if you read your history, god is one of the leading causes of death. George Carlin

  14. I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe. William Howard Taft

  15. Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs. Marlene Dietrich

  16. As a scientist, I cannot help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation.... I am an infidel today. I do not believe what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. When it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then I will believe. Until then, no. Luther Burbank

  17. If God wanted sex to be fun, he wouldn't have invented children as punishment. Ed Bluestone

  18. There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow. Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." Mark Twain

  19. My own view of religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. Bertrand Russell

  20. A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were. Jean de La Bruyere