Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“   As pointed out by French author and Nobelist in literature André Gide: "Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again." So, here I go, saying it again.”
― Guy R. McPherson, Going Dark

“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!”
― George Carlin

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
― Edmund Burke

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
― Stanisŀaw Jerzy Lec

“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
― William Kingdon Clifford, Ethics of Belief and Other Essays

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”
― Lord Kelvin

“Yet the notion that you’re paid what you’re “worth” is by now so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness that many who earn very little assume it’s their own fault.”
― Robert B. Reich, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

“That which the fascists hate, above all else, is intelligence.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread; I'm selling yeast.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“The less we read, the more harmful it is what we read.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.”
― Alfred Adler

“Unto those Three Things which the Ancients held impossible, there should be added this Fourth, to find a Book Printed without erratas.”
― Alfonso de Cartagena

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
― Martin Luther

“It was not Christianity which freed the slave: Christianity accepted slavery; Christian ministers defended it; Christian merchants trafficked in human flesh and blood, and drew their profits from the unspeakable horrors of the middle passage. Christian slaveholders treated their slaves as they did the cattle in their fields: they worked them, scourged them, mated them , parted them, and sold them at will. Abolition came with the decline in religious belief, and largely through the efforts of those who were denounced as heretics.”
― Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner

“It is difficult to exaggerate the adverse influence of the precepts and practices of religion upon the status and happiness of woman. Owing to the fact that upon women devolves the burden of motherhood, with all its accompanying disabilities, they always have been, and always must be, at a natural disadvantage in the struggle of life as compared with men....

With certain exceptions, women all the world over have been relegated to a position of inferiority in the community, greater or less according to the religion and the social organisation of the people; the more religious the people the lower the status of the women...”
― Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner

“If you think you’ve invented something, ask yourself three questions:

1) Has it been done before?
2) Why hasn’t it been done before?
3) Is it worth doing?

If your invention passes these three tests, you’re good to go.”
― Clifford Cohen

“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”
― Richard Feynman

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

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

“Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.”
― Avicenna

“The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“When you're good at something, you'll tell everyone. When you're great at something, they'll tell you.”
― Walter Payton

“A new form of lying has emerged in recent times. This is what Arendt calls “image-making,” where factual truth is dismissed if it doesn’t fit the image. The image becomes a substitute for reality. All such lies harbor an element of violence: organized lying always tends to destroy whatever it has decided to negate. The difference between the traditional political lie and the modern lie is the difference between hiding something and destroying it. We have recently seen how fabricated images can become a reality for millions of people, including the image-maker himself. We have witnessed this in the 2016 American presidential election. Despite the obvious falsity of his claims, the president insists that the crowd at his inauguration was the largest in history; despite the fact that he did not receive a majority of votes, he insists that this was because millions of fraudulent votes were cast; and despite the evidence that Russians interfered with the presidential election, the president claims that the “suggestion” that there was Russian interference is just a devious way of calling his legitimacy into question. The real danger here is that an image is created that loyal followers want to believe regardless of what is factually true. They are encouraged to dismiss anything that conflicts with the image as “fake news” or the conspiracy of elites who want to fool them. What Arendt wrote more than a half a century ago might have been written yesterday. “Contemporary history is full of instances in which tellers of factual truth were felt to be more dangerous, and even more hostile, than the real opponents” (Arendt 1977: 255). Arendt was not sanguine that tellers of factual truth would triumph over image-makers. Factual truth-telling is frequently powerless against image-making and can be defeated in a head-on clash with the powers that be. Nevertheless, she did think that ultimately factual truth has a stubborn power of its own. Image-makers know this, and that is why they seek to discredit a free press and institutions where there is a pursuit of impartial truth.”
― Richard J. Bernstein, Why Read Hannah Arendt Now?

“Arendt also carefully distinguishes public freedom from liberation. Liberation is always liberation from something or someone – whether it is liberation from the misery of poverty or from oppressive rulers. The distinction that Arendt draws between public freedom and liberation is one of her most important distinctions, and it is relevant to contemporary politics, where there is a tendency to fuse or confuse liberation and freedom. Consider, for example, one of the key claims that the Bush administration employed to justify the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. The American public was led to believe that with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, freedom would flourish in Iraq and spread throughout the Middle East. We now know that this was a disastrous illusion. Liberation from oppressors may be a necessary condition for freedom, but it is never a sufficient condition for the achievement of positive public freedom. The overthrow of tyrants, dictators, and totalitarian leaders does not by itself bring about positive tangible freedom. This is a bitter lesson that must be learned over and over again. Even now in the war against ISIS, there is certainly no guarantee that “military victory” will bring about public freedom in the region.”
― Richard J. Bernstein, Why Read Hannah Arendt Now?

“The task she set herself is now our task – to bear the burden of our century and neither to deny its existence nor submit meekly to its weight. Arendt should be read today because she so was so perceptive in comprehending the dangers that still confront us and warned us about becoming indifferent or cynical. She urged us to take responsibility for our political destinies. She taught us that we have the capacity to act in concert, to initiate, to begin, to strive to make freedom a worldly reality. “Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man: politically it is identical with man’s freedom” (Arendt 1976: 479).”
― Richard J. Bernstein, Why Read Hannah Arendt Now?