Quotes of note...

"For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." - Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" - J. Robert Oppenheimer (quoting Vishnu to the Prince about a warrior's duty in the Bhagavad Gita)

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it." - Albert Einstein

"Yea, though I walk through the 'Valley of the Shadow of Death'. I shall fear no evil. For it is I, that is the evilest bastard in the valley. My gun and my bayonet, they comfort me. I fear no one, I let them fear me. My fighting spirit runneth over!"

"Stonewall Jackson would rather lose one man to hard marching, than lose five men to hard battle. Perspiration saves blood!" - Colonel Marttinen (to his tired and battle weary men in Infantry Regiment 61)

"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction." - General Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in Korea
(often attributed to General Douglas MacArthur)

A General Talks to His Army.....
"Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you've heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. ALL REAL Americans, love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers . . . Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in Hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Now, an army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the Saturday Evening Post, don't know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating. Now we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. You know . . . My God, I actually pity those poor bastards we're going up against. My God, I do. We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel. Now some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you'll all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood, shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo, that a moment before was your best friends face, you'll know what to do. Now there's another thing I want you to remember. I don't want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We're not holding anything, we'll let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly, and we're not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him by the nose, and we're going to kick him in the ass. We're going to kick the hell out of him all the time, and we're going to go through him like crap through a goose. Now, there's one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home, and you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you, "What did you do in the great World War Two?" You won't have to say, "Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana." Alright now, you sons of bitches, you know how I feel. Oh! . . . I will be proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle anytime, anywhere. That's all."
3rd Army speech
England, 31 May 1944
6th Armored Division

"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week."
"A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.”
“It’s the unconquerable soul of man, not the nature of the weapon he uses, that insures victory.”
“Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. ”
"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.”
“Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men.”
“You shouldn't underestimate an enemy, but it is just as fatal to overestimate him.”
"Attack! Attack! And if in doubt attack again."
Patton explained to officers in the United States before the North Africa campaign, "If you can work successfully here, in this country, it will be no difficulty at all to kill the assorted sons of bitches you meet in any other country." - General George S. Patton

“Never give up, never, never give up”
"I am ready to meet my maker. Whether or not my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
"....Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar."
"....we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and
growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight
in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him,all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.'"
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." - Winston Churchill

"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.   Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.    . . . Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.  . . .  And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Inaugural Address excerpt
"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind" - John F. Kennedy

"We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies." - George W. Bush, September 20, 2001

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's G-d entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;    that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such from, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.  We are met on a great battlefield of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.  But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow - this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.  The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.  It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under G-d, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." - Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

"No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy."
"England expects that every man will do his duty."- Horatio Nelson

"Men are more easily governed through their vices than their virtues."
"One bad general is worth two good ones."
"Between a battle lost and a battle won, the distance is immense and there stand empires."
"If you had seen one day of war, you would pray to God that you would never see another."
"Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never."
"There is no man more pusillanimous than I when I am planning a campaign. I purposely exaggerate all the dangers and all the calamities that the circumstances make possible. I am in a thoroughly painful state of agitation. This does not keep me from looking quite serene in front of my entourage; I am like an unmarried girl laboring with child. Once I have made up my mind, everything is forgotten except what leads to success."
"Fortune is like a woman—if you miss her to-day, think not to find her to-morrow."
"Circumstances - what are circumstances? I make circumstances."
"An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood."
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
"History is a set of lies agreed upon."
"If you wish to be success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing."
"The best way to keep one's word is not to give it." - Napoleon Bonaparte

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia." - Charles Schultz

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." - George Washington
 
"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." - Delores Ibarruri

“You’re never beaten until you admit it.” General George S. Patton

"There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."
- Kin Hubbard

The natural state of mankind ... and I know that this is a controversial idea... is freedom... And the proof is the lengths to which a man, woman, or child will go to regain it once lost. He will break loose his chains. He will decimate his enemies. He will try and try and try again, against all odds, against all prejudices."
- "John Quincy Adams" (in the movie "Amistad")

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
"When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire . . . or preserve his freedom." - Malcolm X

"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death." - Patrick Henry

"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man dies but once." - derivative of William Shakespeare

"This above all: to thine own self be true." -William Shakespeare ("Hamlet")

"Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived." - Patrick Stewart

"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference." - Reinhold Niebuhr

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is."
"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." - Albert Einstein

"If you understand, things are just as they are. If you do not understand, things are just as they are." - Zen

"The only limits are, as always, those of vision." - James Broughton

"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." - William Jennings Bryan

"But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." - Herman Melville

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."
"All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."
"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking."
"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more."
"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
"I've lived a long life and seen a lot of hard times...most of which never happened." 
"There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice."
"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
"It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."
"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."
"Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution -- these can lift at a colossal humbug -- push it a little -- weaken it a little over the course of a century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained."
"Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied."
"You will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth." - Mark Twain

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage." -Thucydides

It is only through labor and prayerful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things in life… Speak softly but carry a big stick.."
-Theodore Roosevelt

"You may encounter many defeats in life but you yourself must not be defeated." - Maya Angelou

"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other." - Douglas Everett

"Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities...
always see them, for they're always there." - Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." - Walt Disney

"IF"
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.

If you can dream and not make dreams your master;
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them "Hold on!"

If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Your's is the earth and everything that's in it
And which is more-----you'll be a man , my son.
-Rudyard Kipling

"The Road Not Taken"
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
"The world is filled with willing people...
Some willing to work, the rest willing to let them." - Robert Frost

"No bird soars too high, if she soars with her own wings." -William Blake

"Do not go where the path may lead; go where there is no path and leave a trail."
"Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you think you can, you can.  If you think you can't.......you're right!"

"One can be Captain of their ship but one can never be Captain of the Ocean."

"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."

"Happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think." -Dale Carnegie

"And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." - Abraham Lincoln

"Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you, but as the attitude ou bring to life." - John Homer Miller

"Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough." - Emily Dickinson

"They may forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel." - Carl W. Buechner

"Tell me, and I'll forget. Show me, and I may not remember.  Involve me, and I'll understand." - Chinese and Native American Proverb

"Success is to be measured - not so much by the position that we have reached in life - as by the obstacles that we have overcome while trying to succeed."
- Booker T. Washington

"It's not whether you get knocked down; it's whether you get back up." - Vince Lombardi

"Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks." - Dottie Walters

"A winner never quits and a quitter never wins."

"A winner loses more often than losers."

"Those that say they never got a chance never took one."

"If it is to be, it is up to me."

"Only through experiencing our lives do we truly live them."
                     
"The most pervasive limits are those that we impose upon ourselves."
                  
"A rut is a grave with no ends." - Alan Lampkin

"There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who let things happen, and those who wonder: what the !@#$ just happened. Those who make things happen are masters of change while the other two are it's victims." - Ellen Mogensen

"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." - Chinese Proverb

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." - Francis Bacon

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

"Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead, Former Earthwatch Institute Board Member

"When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us." César Chávez

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." - Confucius

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof." - Barbara Kingsolver

"The heart has its reason, which the reason can not know." - Blaise Pascal

"He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows, nor judge all he sees."
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." -Benjamin Franklin

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."
"Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself."
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." - Mark Twain

"The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government." - George Washington

"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is." -  Thomas Jefferson

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - Bible: John (8:32)

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Phillip K. Dick

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." - anonomous

"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence." - Thomas Huxley

"There is then creative reading as well as creative writing" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment." - Wil Rogers

"Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so."
-Bertrand Russell

". . . but if [men] called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end to divine things." - Hippocrates

"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough." - Aldous Huxley

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." - Albert Einstein

"It is amazing how childishly gullible humans are. There are, for example, so many different religions - each of them claiming to have the truth, each saying that their truths are clearly superior to the truths of others - how can someone possibly take any of them seriously? I mean, that's insane." - Arthur C. Clarke

"Imagine the people who believe such things who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly ...." - Isaac Asimov

"I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will---and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain." -Gene Roddenberry

"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window." - Stephen King

"I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." - Thomas Jefferson

"This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it." - John Adams

"We need not fear the expression of ideas --- we do need to fear their suppression." - Harry truman

"The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom, and the unknown. . . . I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool. I have no use for either." - Yama-Dharma, Lord of Light

"Such is the human race. Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
"Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."
"First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards."
"Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she has laid an asteroid." 
"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."
"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
"One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives." 
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
definition of a literary classic..."a book which people praise and don't read."
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education" - Mark Twain

"Christianity...(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ...Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus."
"The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.
Jefferson's word for the Bible? "Dunghill."
"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth." - Thomas Jefferson

"religion is the opiate of the masses." - Karl Marx

". . . I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable in to lodge in; the I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him." - Ishmael, Moby Dick, Herman Melville

"A religion is a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong -- and you are strong. The great trouble with religion -- any religion -- is that the religionists, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge these propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason -- but one cannot have both." Hartley M. "Two-Canes" Baldwin Friday Robert A. Heinlein

". . . there are so many of us who want so badly . . . to be able, really and truly, to believe -- in Someone older, smarter, and wiser who is looking out for us. Faith is clearly not enough for many people. They crave hard evidence, scientific proof. They long for the scientific seal of approval, but are unwilling to put up with the rigorous standards that impart credibility to that seal. What a relief it would be: doubt reliably abolished! Then, the irksome burdon of looking after ourselves would be lifted. We're worried -- and for good reason -- about what it means for the human future if we have only ourselves to rely upon." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.
In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?" - Carl Sagan

"Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent." - Robert Heinlein

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein

"One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all. It's this: "Don't do unto anybody else what you woundn't like to be done to you. It seems to me that that's all there is to it." - anonomous

"History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it." - anonomous

"One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason---but one cannot have both." - anonomous

"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H.Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history." - anonomous

"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." - anonomous

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." - anonomous

"Science can destroy a religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now." - anonomous

"A faith that cannot survive collision with truth is not worth many regrets." - anonomous

"Belief is when someone else does the thinking." - anonomous

"I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." - anonomous

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei

"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.... As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never to be lost, and science can never regress." - J. Robert Oppenheimer

"Science means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt." - Paul Tillich

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." - Vernher von Braun

"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents… What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning." - Max Planck

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
- Howard Aiken

Einstein's theory in 1915 predicted that light was bent by gravity of the sun. When a journalist asked Einstein, in 1919 during a total eclipse, what he would say if the observations would not match with his theory of relativity, he answered:
"I would pity the Lord, 'cause the theory is right anyhow."
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." - (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.  Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
"It is theory that decides what can be observed."
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, has thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest: a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our desires and affection for a few nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
"Great men talk about ideas: Mediocre men talk about things: Small men talk about other men." - Albert Einstein

"When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last of what has gone before and the first of what is yet to come." - Leonardo di Vinci

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the less of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."
"They think me mad- Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened!" - Hermin Melville, Moby Dick 

"It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done...it is a far, far better resting place that I go to than I have ever known."
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

"We save what we love, we love what we understand,
we understand what we are taught" - Baba Diome, Senegalese Naturalist

"SOME GIFTS YOU KEEP"
Some things you keep.
Like good teeth.
Warm coats.
Bald husbands and chubby wives.
They're good for you, reliable and practical and so sublime that to throw them away would make the garbage man a thief.
So you hang on to the older gifts, because something old is sometimes better than something new.
Here are a few thoughts; they may make me sound old and tame and dull at a time when everybody else is frisky and racy and flashing all that's new and improved in their lives.
New spouses, new careers, new thighs, new lips.
The world is dizzy with trade-ins.
I could keep track, but I don't think I want to.
I grew up in the fifties with practical parents--a mother, God bless her, who washed aluminum foil after she cooked in it, then reused it-and still would if she were still alive.
A father who was happier getting old shoes fixed than buying new ones.
They weren't poor, my parents, they were just satisfied.
Their marriage was good, their dreams focused.
Their best friends lived barely a wave away.
I can see them now, fifties couples in Bermuda shorts and Banlon sweaters, lawnmower in one hand, tools in the other.
The tools were for fixing things -- a curtain rod, the kitchen radio, the screen door, the oven door, the hem in a dress.
Things you keep.
It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me crazy.
All that re-fixing, reheating, renewing, I wanted just once to be wasteful.
Waste meant affluence.
Throwing things away meant there'd always be 'more'.
But then my mother died, and on that clear spring night, in the chill of the hospital room, I was struck with the pain of learning that sometimes there isn't any 'more'.
Sometimes what you care about most gets all used up and goes away, never to return.
So while you have it, it's best to love it and care for it and fix it when it's broken and heal it when it's sick.
That's true for marriage, friends, old cars, children with bad report cards, brothers and sisters, dogs with bad hips, and aging parents.
You keep them because they're worth it; because you're worth it.
Sometimes the best gifts are the old ones that you have already received.
Receive the old gifts again, by looking around and appreciating your life, the people and the things in it ...for they are the true gifts of life.