Greg > Greg's Quotes

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#1

“People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along.”
― Stephen Jay Gould

23 likes

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#2

“Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.”
― John Steinbeck

tags: brotherhood-of-man, hatred, understanding

1378 likes

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#3

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

tags: rational-thought, science

1071 likes

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#4

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”
― Albert Einstein

tags: god, rational, religion, thinking

570 likes

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#5

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
― Noam Chomsky

tags: belief, believe, despise, expression, freedom, freedom-of-expression

2163 likes

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#6

“I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”
― Oscar Wilde

tags: humorous, naughty, wordplay

706 likes

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#7

“I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think that it is rather vain.”
― Oscar Wilde

61 likes

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#8

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

tags: aesthetics, appreciation, hidden-things

3952 likes

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#9

“The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.”
― Noam Chomsky

tags: education, education-system, instituions

1543 likes

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#10

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

tags: atheism, reason, science, skeptic

3328 likes

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#11

“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel

tags: atheism, death, inspirational, life

752 likes

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#12

“The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

133 likes

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#13

“To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

241 likes

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#14

“I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

tags: faith, skepticism

469 likes

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#15

“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

tags: george-w-bush, god, religion

612 likes

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#16

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

tags: atheism, philosophy

4630 likes

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#17

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

1762 likes

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#18

“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

1485 likes

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#19

“Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.”
― Richard Dawkins

tags: institutions, organized-religion, religion, richard-dawkins

326 likes

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#20

“Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.”
― Richard Dawkins

428 likes

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#21

“All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.”
― John Steinbeck

tags: conflict, politics, war

2071 likes

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#22

“Anything that just costs money is cheap.”
― John Steinbeck

tags: value

904 likes

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#23

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

2488 likes

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#24

“A man without words is a man without thought.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

tags: wisdom

489 likes

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#25

“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
― David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

tags: errors, philosophy, religion

446 likes

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#26

“Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.”
― David Hume

184 likes

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#27

“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

tags: assurance, belief, certainty, degrees, doubt, evidence, facts, proportion, reason, reasoning, science, skepticism, wisdom

226 likes

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#28

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
― John Locke

3875 likes

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#29

“I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.”
― William Faulkner

167 likes

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#30

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
― Herman Melville

5280 likes

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