Koedy > Koedy's Quotes

“Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers: It is the only prayer that deserves an answer—good, honest, noble work. ”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.”
― P.J. O'Rourke

“Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Thomas Paine From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

“Even I realized that money was to politicians what the eucalyptus tree is to koala bears: food, water, shelter, and something to crap on.”
― P.J. O'Rourke

“Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. ”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Famous Speeches Complete

“They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping or in the keeping of her God the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Individuality From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

“The greatest test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, On the Gods and Other Essays

“Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress.
Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought.
Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Heretics and Heresies:From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

“With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Individuality From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

“The menu is not the meal.”
― Alan Watts

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
― Alan Watts

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
― Alan Watts

“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.”
― Alan Watts

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
― Alan Watts

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
― Alan Watts

“This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
― Alan Watts

“Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.”
― Alan Watts

“So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges—have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.

Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt—laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love.

All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all that were new are foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: 'Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men.' He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: 'The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband.' He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: 'Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence.'

If Jehovah had been civilized, how much grander the Ten Commandments would have been.

All that we call progress—the enfranchisement of man, of labor, the substitution of imprisonment for death, of fine for imprisonment, the destruction of polygamy, the establishing of free speech, of the rights of conscience; in short, all that has tended to the development and civilization of man; all the results of investigation, observation, experience and free thought; all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages—has been done in spite of the Old Testament.”
― Robert G Ingersoll, About The Holy Bible

“The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”
― Alan Watts

“But nirvana is a radical transformation of how it feels to be alive: it feels as if everything were myself, or as if everything---including "my" thoughts and actions---were happening of itself. There are still efforts, choices, and decisions, but not the sense that "I make them"; they arise of themselves in relation to circumstances. This is therefore to feel life, not as an encounter between subject and object, but as a polarized field where the contest of opposites has become the play of opposites.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, Psychotherapy East and West

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”
― Alan Watts

“One's life is an act with no actor, and thus it has always been recognized that the insane man that has lost his mind is a parody of the sage who has transcended his ego. If one is paranoid, the other is metanoid.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, Psychotherapy East and West

“Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.”
― Alan Watts