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#1

“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”
― Sam Harris

tags: evidence, honesty, importance, logic, paradox, reason, value

389 likes

#2

“Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.

The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.

Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, 'this might be all part of God’s plan,' or 'there are no accidents in life,' or 'everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves' - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this.”
― Sam Harris

226 likes

#3

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

tags: affection, atheism, cats, dogs, food, god, pets, religion, shelter, water

3366 likes

#4

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

tags: atheism, reason, science, skeptic

3324 likes

#5

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”
― Christopher Hitchens

tags: books, christopher-hitchens, humour, literature, writing

1186 likes

#6

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

tags: critical-thinking, independent-thought, opinions, skepticism, thinking

868 likes

#7

“[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

526 likes

#8

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. - Hitchens 3:16”
― Christopher Hitchens

tags: brainwashing, critical-thinking, humor, independent-thought, truth, wisdom

369 likes

#9

“The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that ‘if English was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for me’.”
― Christopher Hitchens

tags: dumb, english, translations

347 likes

#10

“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

tags: evidence, skepticism

392 likes

#11

“Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

tags: existence, humor, invention, inventions, no-remorse, problem, voltaire

250 likes

#12

“God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

tags: ahteism, free-inquiry, humanism, science

130 likes

#13

“The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex, and picnics.”
― Christopher Hitchens

tags: anal-sex, champagne, lobster, picnics

74 likes

#14

“What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.”
― Christopher Hitchens

67 likes

#15

“Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

51 likes

#16

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
― Richard Dawkins

1762 likes

#17

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

tags: atheism, existentialism, follow-your-bliss, self-actualization, self-determination

1486 likes

#18

“...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”
― Richard Dawkins

tags: dissent, opinion, truth

335 likes

#19

“You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.

I'm not saying you're more intelligent than Aristotle, or wiser. For all I know, Aristotle's the cleverest person who ever lived. That's not the point. The point is only that science is cumulative, and we live later.”
― Richard Dawkins

tags: albert-einstein, aristotle, charles-darwin, crick, darwin, einstein, francis-crick, intellect, isaac-newton, james-d-watson, james-watson, knowledge, max-planck, newton, planck, polymath, science, understanding, watson

185 likes

#20

“It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.”
― Richard Dawkins

tags: ignorance, math, science

128 likes

#21

“You can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

55 likes

#22

“Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [...] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

39 likes

#23

“The Bishop goes on to the human eye, asking rhetorically, and with the implication that there is no answer, 'How could an organ so complex evolve?' This is not an argument, it is simply an affirmation of incredulity.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

40 likes

#24

“There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.”
― Daniel Dennett

tags: philosophy

110 likes

#25

“The secret of happiness: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”
― Daniel C. Dennett

tags: 2014, happiness, purpose, purpose-driven-life, secret-of-happiness, ted-talks

79 likes

#26

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
― Epicurus

tags: desire, gratitude, hope

2876 likes

#27

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.”
― Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

tags: complaints, glass-half-full, gratitude, misattributed-abraham-lincoln, optimism, perspective, pessimism, positive-thinking, roses, thorns

2364 likes

#28

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: gratitude

695 likes

#29

“All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,' — which is just another way of saying that you can't.”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

tags: failure, humor, inspirational, success

370 likes

#30

“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”
― Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

55 likes

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