Post a quote or two from a great thinker and add your comment.

[Skeptisch]

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein

The above is often used by people who feel good old Albert was religious in a traditional way, they are forgetting he also said this:

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
Albert Einstein

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

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.

Robert A. Heinlein
From Time Enough For Love 1973

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.

Robert A. Heinlein
From Life-Line 1939

 

[wmjbyatt]

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
- Willy Wonka

**** the police.
- NWA

 

[Reptillian]

"Man is so necessarily mad, that to not be mad would amount to another form of madness" - Blaise Pascal

I've always liked this quote as it offers an explaination of why brilliance and insanity are so often linked. Its reminiscent of Plato's allegory of the cave where he says that the people who have only experienced shadow think the man who has witnessed the truth and the surface world to be mad when he tries to explain it to them.

 

[Revoltingest]

"A man's gotta know his limitations." - Dirty Harry (Callahan)

Avoid painful learning experiences by keeping this in mind.

 

[CaptainXeroid]

I like the one I have as my signature.

"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convinced I am of this truth–that God governs the affairs of men." --Benjamin Franklin

It's important to remember that most of our great Presidents expressed faith in God even they had varied religious experiences.
"That I am not a member of any Christian church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular....I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, or scoffer at, religion" -- Abraham Lincoln

 

[9Westy9]

“I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”
― Thomas Paine

I like this quote. It helps me to keep an open mind when addressing new, or old, ideas. It stops me from jumping in and judging a belief without first examining it.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

Just some of my favorite quotes from an underrated philosopher:

"Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe."

"That which always was,
and is, and will be everlasting fire,
the same for all, the cosmos,
made neither by god nor man,
replenishes in measure
as it burns away."

- Heraclitus

A shame he was known as the Obscure or the Weeping Philosopher.

 

[Skeptisch]

Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective.
If a human disagrees with you, let him live.
In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
Carl Sagan

 

[Tor_Hershman]

Old Albert once said something to the effect that "Science without Religon is Lame and Religion without Science is poopy-pants (Something akin to that), however
Prof. E. was 100% incorrect.....the proper relationship is
"Science without Religion is Science & Religion without Science is Religion."

 

[Tor_Hershman]

HOWEVER, if I had a sweet deal @ Princeton, as Prof. E. had, I'd of sacrificed a chicken...just as he did.

 

[jmvizanko]

"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." - Thomas Jefferson

Here you see the largest author of America displaying his Libertarianism by arguing that people should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else. It would be refreshing to see a realistically electable political candidate with such a pro-freedom viewpoint.

And my favorite quote (regarding religion) is a personally modified Stephen Roberts quote:

"Religious faith is arbitrary. When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods people believe in, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

 

[jmvizanko]

Prof. E. was 100% incorrect.....the proper relationship is
"Science without Religion is Science & Religion without Science is Religion."

I love it. I never understood why he thought science needs religion in even the slightest way necessary to justify that quote of his. And clearly most religion is not interested in science, as it usually has more to provably say about why it has something wrong than anything else.

 

[apophenia]

“No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.”
- Neils Bohr

'nuff said

 

[St Giordano Bruno]

Benjamin Franklin is said to have quoted "there are only two certainties in life, death and taxes"

I would add, what about DNA or RNA?

 

[jmvizanko]

Benjamin Franklin is said to have quoted "there are only two certainties in life, death and taxes"

I would add, what about DNA or RNA?

I would subtract taxes. If you were to live as a hermit on say a deserted island, no taxes.

And who knows if we will be able to cheat death some day?

 

[sandandfoam]

"Live while you can and die when you can't help it." - My Nan.

Wise woman. I miss her.

 

[gnostic]

Charlie Brown[/b], Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts 1950-2000]"Oh, good grief..."

The most insightful (and cynical) comment of the world around us.

 

[Kathryn]

"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive."

- G.K. Chesterton (The Thing. CW. III 191)

Fairy tales do not give a child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Tremendous Trifles (1909), XVII: "The Red Angel"
Variant: Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
Earliest known attribution is an epigraph in Neil Gaiman, Coraline (2004)

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.
Illustrated London News (19 April 1924)

Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human.

GK Chesterton