Maxims

On Religion

• Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones;
  who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;
  mouths golden rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented hell;
  who mouths morals to other people and has none himself;
  who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all;
  who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man,
  instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself;
  and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!
  --Mark Twain
• We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
  --- Richard Dawkins
• Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? 
  Then is he impotent.
  
  Is he able, but not willing?
  Then is he malevolent.
  
  Is he both able and willing?
  Then whence cometh evil?
  
  Is he nether able nor willing?
  Then why call him god?
  ---Epicurus
  
• "Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder"
• The church says that the Earth is flat, but I have seen the shadow on the moon and I have more faith in the shadow than in the church.
  --Ferdinand Magellan
• "The equal toleration of all religions...is the same as atheism."--Pope Leo XIII, "Imortale Dei"
• "Religions are like farts. Yours is good, but everyone else's stinks." --Picket Fences
• "I do further promise and declare, that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do and to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth, and that I will spare neither sex, age nor condition and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants' heads against the wall, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race." --Pope Paul III, 1576
• "There was a time when religion ruled the world. It was known as the dark ages." --Ruth Hurmence, author
• For good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
  ---Steven Weinberg
• God was invented to explain mystery. --Richard Feynman
• If god wanted us to be Atheists we'd be born that way.
• Ancient bronze age urban legends are that what today we call religion. kps
• The bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. -- Abraham Lincoln
• 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 religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. --Albert Einstein
• People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy.
  But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will
  cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.
  --Hippocrates, 5th century
• "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it doesn't go away."-- Philip K. Dick
• If people believe in things that lack testable evidence - they will not share a common reality -- which results in conflict. -kps
• There are those who scoff at the schoolboy,
  calling him frivolous and shallow.
  Yet, it was the schoolboy who said,
  Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
  -Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar Mark Twain
• "If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men." "
• If the ignorance of nature gave birth to Gods, then the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.  --Paul-Henri, baron d'Holbach
• Religious delusion is the nicotine of the people. (Nicotine is more addicting than opium). kps
• "All children are atheists - they have no idea of God." --Paul-Henri, baron d'Holbach
• It is immoral to teach children to embrace delusions. kps
• "Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism." --Paul-Henri, baron d'Holbach
•  God has no place within school walls just as facts have no place within organized religion!
• "No, I'm not sure that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.  This is one nation under god."
  -- George Bush, Free Inquiry Magazine, Fall 88, Volume 8, Number 4, page 16. Cf.
• "Fascism is a religious concept" --Benito Mussolini, Fascism, Institutions And Doctrines
• Dogma: an unquestioned belief. kps
• The clergy believe that any power confided  in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly.  -- Thomas Jefferson
• I've seldom met an intelligent person who's views were not narrowed or distorted by religion. James Buchanan 
• My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation have become clearer and stronger with advancing years. --- Abraham Lincoln
• By simple common sense I don't believe in god. -- Charlie Chaplin
• All thinking men are atheists. -- Ernest Hemingway
• Faith means not wanting to know what is true. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
• Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
• "Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying." --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• "Do not thank god for what man does." --Lemuel K. Washburn
• "Most people are bothered by those passages of scripture they do not understand,
  but the passages that bother me are those I DO understand."
  -- Mark Twain
• "I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do."
  --D. Dale Gulledge
• Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb."
  -- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
• "It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies." -- Mark Twain
• Organized religion is a root of evil too. kps
•  Why does the Vatican have lightning rods?
• "A little boy prayed for a bike. Then he realized god doesn't work that way so he stole a bike and asked for forgiveness." --author unknown to me
• Theology--An effort to explain the unknowable.
• True wisdom is knowing what we don't know. True maturity is being comfortable with the idea of not knowing.  -kps
• I could be wrong, but it seems to me - that it is really the other way around; god was created in mans image.  -kps
• "The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not."
   --Eric Hoffer
• Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot even make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.
  --Montaigne
• So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
  Bertrand Russell
  
• Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
  P.J. O'Rourke
• God save me from your followers.
• Militant agnostic: I don't know and you don't either.
• Men never do evil so completely or cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
  Blaise Pascal
• Never in the world does hatred cease by hatred; hatred ceases by love.
  --Buddha
• I believe there is something out there watching over us. Unfortunately, it's the government.
  Woody Allen
• Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe and confuse it with reality.
  kps
• Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
  Seneca the Younger
  
• There will never be world peace as long as religion exists.
• Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
  Andre Gide:
• If god made the Earth, then why do you want to go to heaven?
• "During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry."
  -- Mark Twain, Europe and Elsewhere
• Life gives us just a short look at the wonders of reality. I'm saddened to see so many spending their time trying to replace it with the fantasy of religion.
  kps
• 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.
  Carl Sagan
• Is it possible that belief is people huddled in a church trying to convince each other they won't die when they die? Sort of a mutual delusion reinforcement support group? kps
  
• Once man evolved to the point of being capable of abstract thought and gained the ability to "what if", the ability to model, in our own minds ,our own end, lets us raise the great anxiety of our self preservation instincts. Isn't death what most people spend their whole lives running from? 
• As a child, my classmates often told me that since I do not believe in God I was going to go to Hell. Little did they know - I do not believe in Hell either!
  
• "In no instances have the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people."
  James Madison
  
• The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
  Mark Twain
• The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little by way of example.
  Mark Twain
  
• Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.
  Mark Twain
• Christians are quick to scoff at the absurdity of other religions when most fail to realize they worship a book that contains talking bushes and donkeys.
• Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?
  Friedrich Nietzsche
• Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the supposed creator of human intelligence.
• Religious war: Killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.
• Religion is inspirational; It inspires hate for the other mans religion. -kps
• In the beginning, there was nothing. Then God said: "Let there be light!" And there was still nothing, but you could see it now.
• Isn't Christianity really the worship and romanticizing of sorrow? Does that sound like a healthy practice to you? -kps
• "These people's God has shown them by a million acts that he respects none of the Bible's statues. He breaks every one of them himself, adultery and all."
  -- Mark Twain and the Three R's
• I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.
  Gerry Spence
• "A delusion held by one person is a mental illness, held by a few is a cult, held by many is a religion."  -Robert Todd Carroll
  
• Science has questions that may never be answered. Religion has answers that may never be questioned. -kps
• Religion provides the means to declare with absolute certainty that one knows the unknowable.
• I've only met a handful of people that really have their feet on the ground.
  Many smart people still cling to a couple little silly magical beliefs they fall for and can't let go of.  --kps
• Religion is the prototype of socialism. -kps
• "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," Albert Einstein January 3, 1954
• "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions, and the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people." Albert Einstein January 3, 1954

Socialism

• The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual...
  Adolf Hitler, quoted in Hitler, A Study in Tyranny,by Alan Bullock (Harper Collins, NY)
• "It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. ....  -- Adolf Hitler
• "We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." 
  -- Hillary Clinton, (1993)
• "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..." 
  -- President William J. Clinton, USA Today, March 11, 1993, Page 2A

• "The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."  -- Ayn Rand
• "America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to "the common good," but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." -- Ayn Rand
•  "The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods." -- H. L. Mencken
• "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H. L. Mencken
• "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size.   I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom.  My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.  It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden.  I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.   And if I should later be aked for neglecting my constituent's "interests", I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."  -- Barry Goldwater
• "In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" -- From Dosteovsky's Grand Inquisitor
• Politicians are like diapers: they should be changed frequently - and for exactly the same reason. -- Anonymous
• Ask any politician in private, It's a blast spending other peoples money. kps
•  "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any  government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
  -- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"
• "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
  -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
• Misdirection is the key to being a good magician. 
  Magicians tell you they are doing something while they do something quite different. 
  Much like politicians, except we can afford magicians. -kps
• It looks like both parties are now playing the "tax Peter
  to buy Paul's vote" game. This won't end well. -kps
• Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.  The world owes you nothing.  It was here first.
  - Mark Twain 
• We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.
  - Will Rogers
• Assumption is the mother of mistakes.
  

Business philosophy

• We can't sue and tax each other into prosperity. -kps
• If you want to maximize failure;  estimate the most optimistic prediction that has a non-zero probability of coming true.
• Have US corporations fallen into management by hysterical optimism?
• If you don't set any goals, you are not likely to reach them.kps
• The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
  The secret of getting start is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
  --Mark Twain
• A penny saved is a tax-free penny earned. -kps
• Merchandise offered without price, is sure to cost more than it is worth.  -kps
• A patent provides one a license to enrich his lawyer. -kps
• If you shake his hand, count your fingers.
• "If it is worth doing, it is worth doing for money."
• Any cat would tell you that you can only wash one paw at a time; while we try to do everything at once. -kps
• "Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
• The only valid market survey is a signed purchase order.
• If you don't set any goals, you are not likely to reach them.
  KPS

Love, Women and Beauty

• Love is blind; marriage is a real eye opener.
• There are two techniques to win an argument with a woman; neither one works.
• Somehow we have to get along together, even if I have to do most of the getting.
• There was nothing wrong with her looks that a good expression wouldn't cure.
• What would men be without women?  Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.
  - Mark Twain 
• Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen.  I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.
  - Mark Twain
• My wife has a slight impediment in her speech.  Every now and then she stops to breathe.
  - Jimmy Durante

Optimism and Pessimism

• Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.
• "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
  and the pessimist fears that this is true."
  -- James Branch Cabell (1879-1958)
• If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
• Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
• When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
• You can't fall out of bed if you are sleeping on the floor.

Life and Death

• My grandfather was often prodded to stop eating bacon due to the sodium content. To this he replied, "Do you really live longer; or does it just seem longer? He kept eating bacon and died at 101 years old.  Yet, it is true, in his later years he told everyone that he had stopped buying green bananas.
• Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head
  --Mark Twain
• Facing death - it is the key to a good life. Most people never do. Most people spend a lot of energy running from death, but overcoming the fear of death sets one free. The running is what fuels religion - I'm so saddened to see people huddled in a church trying to convince each other they won't die when they die. Our brains have not yet evolved to handle our ability to "what if" about our ultimate fate - our survival instincts fire up and pump up the stress. --kps
• What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
• Why are so many spending time watching dark movies about
  hopelessness, the macabre, and perversion; why are they reading
  books about unfaithfulness and self destruction?  Why is nothing
  uplifting, also considered 'cool' or entertaining? -kps

Intelligence

• Ignorance is more common than hydrogen.
  --Frank Zappa
• "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field."
  -- Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)
• Half of all people are below average.
• Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
• "Never let school interfere with your education." - Mark Twain
• There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
  --Flannery O'Connor

Simple Truths

• An armed society is a polite society.
• If the human brain was simple enough to understand, we would be to simple to understand it.
• A simple truth: fancy titles and pajamas are really just a waste of time. kps
• You either have character, or you are a character.
• 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
• 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
• A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
• What is, is.
  What was, was.
  What might of been,
  never will be.
• "Give me four parameters and I can fit an elephant.
  Give me five and I can wag its tail''
  -- (The source quote?? Variants have been attributed to C.F. Gauss, Niels Bohr, Lord Kelvin, Enrico Fermi.)
• Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
• Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
  Gödel, Escher, Bach 1979.
• Assumption is the mother of mistakes
  Buckaroo Banzai
• No watter where you go; there you are.
  Buckaroo Banzai

Good Advice

• When angry count four; when very angry, swear.
  --Mark Twain
• Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it.
  --Mark Twain
• Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. -- Mark Twain
• Never try to teach a pig to sing;
  You're wasting your time --
  and it annoys the pig.   ----
  Simply singing to the pig also annoys it.
• It is better to have kludged and klutzed than to have never of kluged at all. kps
• The problem with telling lies is, that no matter how smart one is,
  after awhile one will begin to believe his own. At that point, one no
  longer knows what is real from a lie.
  Knowing what is real is what gives meaning to life.
  --kps
• Don't be a waste of space.
  --kps
• Health tip #347:
  When confronted with the urge to exercise;
  simply lay down and wait for it to pass.
• You should always be careful when reading books about health. Otherwise you might die of a misprint.
  (Mark Twain)
• Cry a river, build a bridge, get over it.

Just Random Trailings

• The whole point of this sentence is to make clear what the whole point of this sentence is. 
  --Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Time wounds all heels.
• Let us live most happily, free from hatred in the midst of the hateful; Let us remain free from hatred in the midst of people who hate.
  --Buddha
• Do not look at the faults of what others have done or not done; observe what you yourself have done or not done.
  --Buddha
• When faced with the reality that he would have to start working a real job
  for a living, the politician became about a quarter turn past hand tight. -kps
• I wonder why I wonder why; I wonder why I wonder.
• He disappeared like a belch in a windstorm.
• This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't.
• He's about a quarter turn past hand tight.
• That steak's so rare, a good vet could save it!
• He's about two bubbles off plumb.
• I think the butter's slipped off your biscuit.
• Who licked the red off your candy?
• Go tell your mother she wants you.
• I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
• All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.
• I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
• Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film.
• The new kid got a lot of attention; he was a bug in a jar. 
• "The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion."
  --Douglas Hofstadter
• "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
  --Flannery O'Connor
• "Beware the fury of a patient man."
  --John Dryden
• "I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous"
  --Brent Barry
• There is no place like 127.0.0.1
• Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
  - Herbert Henry Asquith 
• I would rather see the world as it really is even at the cost of miserable desperation than be happy from delusion.
  --kps
  
  
  
  

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