Reader > Reader's Quotes

“He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool.”
― Brigham Young

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

“See the world as it is, not as you wish it would be”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“In quoting others, we cite ourselves.”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

“What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as the brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance.”
― Christopher Hitchens, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports

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

“You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.”
― Ben Goldacre, Bad Science

“Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.”
― Bruce Lee

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
― George Orwell

“I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.”
― Albert Einstein

“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.”
― Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman's Camden Conversations

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”
― Albert Einstein

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.”
― H.L. Mencken

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
― Bertrand Russell

“...but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, LL.D ...: Comprising a Series of Letters on Miscellaneous, Literary, and Political Subjects ...

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”
― David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

“He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “No harm in that. I’ve never known what to do,” said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. “Been completely at a loss my whole life.” He hesitated. “I think it’s called being human, or something.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.”
― Roger Bacon

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
― Blaise Pascal

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches