Faisal Saeed > Faisal's Quotes

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#1

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
― Bertrand Russell

8044 likes

#2

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
― Bertrand Russell

tags: confidence, eccentricity, philosophy

5397 likes

#3

“I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.”
― Bertrand Russell , Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

tags: babylon, belief, burden-of-proof, christian-god, egyptian, fiction, gods, hypothesis, knowledge, olympus, probability, proof, rational, reason, santa, satan, superstition

820 likes

#4

“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence”
― Bertrand Russell

tags: god, religion

1035 likes

#5

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

tags: cruelty, fear, superstition

724 likes

#6

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
― Bertrand Russell

tags: paraphrased, philosophy

1346 likes

#7

“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.”
― Bertrand Russell

tags: bertrand-russel

187 likes

#8

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
― Benjamin Franklin

266 likes

#9

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: accomplishment, attributed-no-source, be-yourself, conformity, individuality

69679 likes

#10

“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

4629 likes

#11

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

tags: death, inspirational, science, wonder

1878 likes

#12

“Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not want to sign.”
― Théophile Gautier

tags: misattributed-to-einstein

8893 likes

#13

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

tags: knowledge, wisdom

15494 likes

#14

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

tags: inspiration, truth, wisdom

7272 likes

#15

“Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.”
― Margaret Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher : The Greatest Speeches

tags: democracy, inspirational, leadership, reality

365 likes

#16

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

tags: truth

8510 likes

#17

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

tags: inspirational

10940 likes

#18

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

tags: freedom, ignorance, inspirational, war

7182 likes

#19

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

tags: truth

16206 likes

#20

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

tags: animal-farm

7677 likes

#21

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ”
― George Orwell

tags: politics-language

2154 likes

#22

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
― George Orwell

tags: history, propaganda, rewriting-history

3104 likes

#23

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”
― George Orwell, In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

tags: humanity, truth, wisdom

1281 likes

#24

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell

tags: freedom-of-speech, liberty

2245 likes

#25

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

tags: military, police, violence

988 likes

#26

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

tags: affection, atheism, cats, dogs, food, god, pets, religion, shelter, water

3367 likes

#27

“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

#28

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”
― Christopher Hitchens

tags: books, christopher-hitchens, humour, literature, writing

1186 likes

#29

“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

#30

“MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”
― Christopher Hitchens

tags: birth-control, empowerment-of-women, mother-teresa, poverty, poverty-alleviation

473 likes

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