Jonas Gehrlein > Jonas's Quotes

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#1

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
― Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

tags: bible, christianity, evolution, science

970 likes

#2

“Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.”
― J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds

tags: philosophy, science

154 likes

#3

“We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.”
― Lily Tomlin

303 likes

#4

“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

tags: darwin, ethics, evolution, peace, strength, survival, survival-of-the-fittest, war

349 likes

#5

“Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we're frightened, the hair on our skin stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. [...]

I'm made up of the memories of my parents and my grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

349 likes

#6

“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?”
― Milton Berle

tags: evolution, intelligent-design, motherhood

174 likes

#7

“Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

159 likes

#8

“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”
― Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

tags: evolution, extinction, science, survival

348 likes

#9

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

tags: adaptability, evolution, misattributed-to-darwin, survival, survival-of-the-fittest

587 likes

#10

“If you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship flying through the universe.”
― Joe Rogan

tags: evolution, live, universe

169 likes

#11

“Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

tags: evolution, good-and-evil, patriotism

104 likes

#12

“Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been straining from the beginning? ...Very far from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

tags: evolution, philosophy

82 likes

#13

“Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

tags: darwinism, evolution, humor

52 likes

#14

“Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

tags: evolution

75 likes

#15

“[Responding to the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce's question whether he traced his descent from an ape on his mother's or his father's side]

A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who … plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.”
― Thomas Huxley

tags: aimless, ape, discussion, evolution, inspirational, nature, obstruction, preference, prejudice, purpose, question, religious-prejudice, rhetoric, ridicule, science, scientific

47 likes

#16

“Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which nothing can be conceived," it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.”
― Daniel C. Dennett

tags: evolution, nature, pantheism

33 likes

#17

“He cursed himself for having assumed the weather would be sunny. Perhaps it was the result of evolution, he thought--some adaptive gene that allowed the English to go on making blithe outdoor plans in the face of almost certain rain.”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

tags: englishmen, evolution, hope, rain, weather

20 likes

#18

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

tags: attributed-no-source, be-yourself, gilbert-perreira, honesty, inspirational, misattributed-oscar-wilde, quote-investigator

177070 likes

#20

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

tags: charles-bayard-mitchell

101564 likes

#21

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

tags: attributed-no-source, enemies, forgiveness, strategy

81812 likes

#22

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

tags: intelligence, self-deprecation

71690 likes

#23

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

tags: inspirational, music, philosophy

74334 likes

#24

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

tags: life, love

62176 likes

#25

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

tags: aliteracy, books, classic, humor

51603 likes

#26

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”
― Dr. Seuss

tags: fantasy

36836 likes

#27

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
― Lloyd Alexander

7805 likes

#28

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

tags: fantasy, literature, philosophy

5669 likes

#29

“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

tags: fantasy, fear, kvothe, man-s, name, patrick-rothfuss, wind, wise

3417 likes

#30

“Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time.”
― Walt Disney

tags: fantasy, time

533 likes

#31

“Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

tags: fantasy, happiness, young-adult

816 likes

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