Here are some of my favorite quotes on various topics:
On Religion:
(Regarding abstinence-only sex ed. programs in public schools): "The vows of abstinence break far more easily than latex condoms." - Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General, Oct. 2004 In The Life
"The most preposterous notion that homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful."
- Robert A. Heilein, Stranger in a Strange Land
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
- Albert Einstein
"Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities"
- Voltaire
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
- Dennis Diderot
"To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is."
- Albert Einstein
"Organized religion is like organized crime; it preys on peoples' weaknesses, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate."
- Author Unknown
"Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life."
- Author Unknown
"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
- Author Unknown"We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake."
- Catherine Fahringer
"Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things. One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, dirty thing on the face of the earth and you should save it for someone you love."
- Butch Hancock
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."
- Stephen King
"Randomness scares people. Religion is a way to explain randomness."
- Fran Lebowitz
"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 would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking."
- Carl Sagan --The Demon-Haunted World
"The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose."
- William Shakespeare
"What was it that Adam ate that he wasn't supposed to eat? It wasn't just an apple. It was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The subtle message? 'Get smart and I'll fuck you over' sayeth the Lord. God is the smartest, and he doesn't want any Competition. Is this not an absolutely anti-intellectual religion?"
- Frank Zappa
"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
"I'm a pedestrian. I see religion like footwear. Some people like to wear really comfortable shoes; some people like to wear big, tall boots, really immerse themselves in it. I choose to go barefoot, just don't step on my toes and we can get along just fine."
- K. Muir
"Religion is a record of failed scientific theories."
- ?
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
- Blaise Pascal
"If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits." - Dan Barker, of Freedom From Religion Foundation
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so." - Mark Twain
"Calling atheism a religion is like calling health a disease."
- TenSpace on Plastic
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into."
- Jonathan Swift
On Homosexuality:
"Most times, the only gay or lesbian face people know of is who they see in the pride parade. To judge us on that would be like judging heterosexuals after watching Mardi Gras."
- Candace Gingrich, House Speaker Newt Gingrich's lesbian sister, to the Baltimore Alternative.
"If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts."
- Kurt Vonnegut
"We all know that sexual orientation has nothing to do with balancing a book, fixing a broken bone or changing a spark plug."
- Bill Clinton
"We are clearly strongest as a nation when we use the full talents of all our people, regardless of race or religious faith, national origin or sexual orientation, gender or disability"
- Bill Clinton
Humor:
"The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face. "
- Jack Handey
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off dead. No, wait, not me, you." - Jack Handey
"I hope that if dogs ever take over the world, and they choose a king, they don't just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas." - Jack Handey
"I think a good gift for the President would be a chocolate revolver. And since he is so busy, you'd probably have to run up to him real quick and give it to him." - Jack Handey
"I bet the main reason the police keep people away from a plane crash is they don't want anybody walking in and lying down in the crash stuff, then, when somebody comes up, act like they just woke up and go, 'What was THAT?!' "
- Jack Handey
"One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought that it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late."
- Jack Handey
(These quotes are from a funny gal that visited #gayyouth on UnderNet a long while back.)
<JadedGrrl> My cats are losers... they spend the day high off their asses... Catnip is evil shit... they used to be sweet cats... now they just use me for their high.
<JadedGrrl> Sraks, any porn'll do.. I just need the moaning and grunting sounds to get me goin :)
Misc:
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made."
- Oscar Wilde
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
- Jonathan Swift
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible"
- Lord Kelvin, 1895.
"Everything that can be invented, has been invented"
- Charles H. Duell, commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, 1899.
"Mathematics is music for the mind; music is mathematics for the soul."
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"No law can be sacred to me but that of my own nature."
- Emerson
"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members."
- Emerson
"To be great is to be misunderstood."
- Emerson
"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."
- Emerson
"It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not yet lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels."
- Emerson
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
- Emerson
"However mean your life is, meet it and love it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is."
- Emerson
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the great twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't."
"Inertia makes the world go round."
"It's better to be hated for what you are, than to be loved for what you are not."
- Andre Gide
"Let us not wallow in the valley of despair."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
"No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed."
- Helen Keller
- Thomas Jefferson
The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had seemed unlike."
- Jacob Bronowski
"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame."
- Oscar Wilde
(A few quotes from TV shows... they're probably far less impressive out of context.) :)
"If you value your lives, be somewhere else"
- Ambassador Delynn (Babylon 5)
"This ship will not survive the formation of the cosmos."
- Lt. Torres, STV
"Divine intervention is unlikely."
- The Doctor, STV