Andrew > Andrew's Quotes

“If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

“At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God’s own heart?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

“Forests and meat animals compete for the same land. The prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat means that agribusiness can pay more than those who want to preserve or restore the forest. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet – for the sake of hamburgers”
― Peter Singer, Animal Liberation

“I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would think it either a good life, or an amusing one, to sit with one's hands before one doing nothing - to live like a gentleman, as fools call it.”
― William Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
― William Morris

“Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.”
― William Morris

“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.”
― Robert Heinlein

“RICH I’m lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence.

CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very important to you.”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts

“Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But, if it is flat, will the King's command make it round? And, if it is round, will the King's command flatten it?”
― Robert Bolt

“Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

“In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

“You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

“A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

“Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interest of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced bye the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

“The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.”
― Donald Barthelme, Come Back, Dr. Caligari

“How strange that excision – female circumcision, with several languages using the same term for both kinds of mutilation – of little girls should revolt the westerner but excite no disapproval when it is performed on little boys. Consensus on the point seems absolute. But ask your interlocutor to think about the validity of this surgical procedure, which consists of removing a healthy part of a nonconsenting child’s body on nonmedical grounds – the legal definition of… mutilation.”
― Michel Onfray, Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam

“Stoop, then, or you will be beaten to your knees. Stoop voluntarily, and you may save a remnant. You have depended on metal and power and they have sustained you as far as they could. You have ignored mind and morale and they have failed you.”
― Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation

“Generally places that are comfortable with excellence don’t call themselves centers of excellence. Has anyone heard of a Princeton University Center of Excellence? Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of Excellence?”
― Otis Webb Brawley, How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America

“When it comes to screening, a doctor who says ‘Let’s err on the side of caution,’ may actually err on the side of reckless ignorance and grave harm.”
― Otis Webb Brawley, How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America

“Here is the problem: Poor Americans consume too little healthcare, especially preventive healthcare. Other Americans—often rich Americans—consume too much healthcare, often unwisely, and sometimes to their detriment. The American healthcare system combines famine with gluttony.”
― Otis Webb Brawley, How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America

“There was no such thing as luck. Luck was a word idiots used to explain the consequences of their own rashness, and selfishness, and stupidity. More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“I’m a magician with no magic, and that’s no one at all.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“I love whom I love," Prince Lir repeated firmly. "You have no power over anything that matters.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known. Unfortunately, it seems to be working backward at the moment, and even I can find no way to set it right. It must be that you are meant to find your own way to reach your power in time; but frankly, you should live so long as that will take you. Therefore I grant it that you shall not age from this day forth, but will travel the world round and round, eternally inefficient, until at last you come to yourself and know what you are. Don't thank me. I tremble at your doom.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn't say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Haven’t you ever been in a fairy tale before?”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“..no meal is good enough to justify all the money and effort wasted in preparing it. It is an illusion and an expense. Live as I do, undeceived.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“A small sample, we repeat, is rarely the big scientific problem. Interpretation is.”
― Stephen Thomas Ziliak, The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives