civilbrights > Quotes

No longer are we satisfied with the fiction of things. We want them in their full reality.

—Mikhail Bakunin

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

—Aleister Crowley

I am not leaving behind a spiritual legacy of dogmas, unchangeable petrified directives. My spiritual legacy is science and reason....What I wanted to do and what I tried to achieve for the Turkish Nation is quite evident. If those people who wish to follow me after I passed away take the reason and science as their guides they will be my true spiritual heirs.

—Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

A military victory is insufficient for a true liberation. In our political life, in social life, in the education of people, science and technology will be our guide.

—Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - 1922

Science is the only true guide in life.

—Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - Founder of modern Turkey 1924

The trouble is not children afraid of darkness, but adults afraid of light.

—Plato

Religion has nothing to do with morality, and morality has nothing to do with religion.

—John Taylor

Gay is succinct, uplifting, positive: an 'up' word, where homosexual is a down word, and queer, faggot and pooftah are insults. Those of us who subscribe to no religion; those of us whose view of the universe is natural rather than supernatural; those of us who rejoice in the real and scorn the false comfort of the unreal, we need a word of our own, a word like 'gay'. ... Like gay, it should be a noun hijacked from an adjective, with its original meaning changed but not too much. Like gay, it should be catchy: a potentially prolific meme. Like gay, it should be positive, warm, cheerful, bright.

—Richard Dawkins

"Give me your hand ... your hand! Now feel that: Human flesh against human flesh. We're the same. We share the same history, the same heritage, the same lives. We're tied together beyond any untying. Man or woman, it makes no difference, we're human. We couldn't escape from each other even if we wanted to. That's how you do it, Lieutenant. By remembering who and what you are: a bit of flesh and blood afloat in a universe without end. And the only thing that's truly yours is the rest of humanity. That's where our duty lies. Do you understand me?"

—Captain Kirk, Who Mourns for Adonais?

"I do not believe in forgiveness as it is preached by the church. We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves. If I rob Mr. Smith and God forgives me, how does that help Smith? [...] If there is another world, we have got to settle with the people we have wronged in this. No bankrupt court there. Every cent must be paid..."

—Robert G. Ingersoll

When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it's not, mmmmmmmm, boy.

—Jack Handey

All religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense, for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid, and at odds with man's reason that any strong and vigorous intelligence laughs at them.

—Pierre Charron in "Of Wisdom"

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

—Carl Sagan

Worship the potato? The idea seemed silly to me. But then I thought, what else is more deserving of worship? It's simple, it comes from the earth, and it can kill you if you disobey it.

—Jack Handey

"If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal."

—Carl Sagan

I had a vision, in common with other men who had a vision, and were wrong.

—sole

I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an explanation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious, ad hoc magic.

—Richard Dawkins

The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope, that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on. I say this as someone who has not followed any kind of lifelong organized religion. But I don't doubt that the hardships of the future will draw even the most secular spirits into an emergent spiritual practice of some kind. There is an excellent chance that this will go way too far, as Christianity and other belief systems have done at various times, in various ways.

—James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency

While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.

—Mark Twain

Ancestor worship must be an appealing idea to those who are about to become ancestors.

—Steven Pinker, How The Mind Works