Some of My Favorite Quotes
NOTE: While the tone of many of these quotes is decidedly anti-Christian, I want to express that I, myself, have NOTHING against Christianity. The reason these quotes have been included is to show that many of the early leaders of the United States were not Christian, contrary to what public opinion says...
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
--Thomas Jefferson
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of
prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.
--Eleanor Roosevelt
"The most effective way to cope with change is to help create it."
--L.W. Lynett
"The purpose of a liberal education is to make you philosophical enough to accept the fact that you will never make much money."
--Anonymous
"Every now and again take a good look at something not made with hands-- a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream. There will come to you wisdom and patience and solace and, above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world."
--Sidney Lovett
"How he envies the wretch with a soul wrapt in steel!
His pleasures are scarce yet his troubles are few,
Who laughs at the pange that he never can feel
And dreads not the anguish of love's last adieu!
--"Love's Last Adieu" by George Gordon, Lord Byron
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
--The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
--Jimi Hendrix
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
--Arthur Schopenhauer
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."
--Helen Keller
"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on
the Christian religion."
--President George Washington
"Doubt is the enemy of magic."
--Marion Zimmer Bradley in The Forest House
"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
--H.G. Welles
�I work hard�but working hard is easy when you�re doing what you love.�
--Starhawk, in Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
"...With personal freedom comes personal responsibility."
--Francesca de Grandis in Be a Goddess!
"I know, graceful girl, how to kiss when I am kissed,
and again, I know how to bite when I am bitten."
--Catullus
"From there to here and here to there, funny things are everywhere."
--Dr. Seuss
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
--William Arthur Ward
"I am comforted by life's stability, by earth's unchangeableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its place in the unfolding of knowledge. It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us."
--Pearl S. Buck
�Myths are great poems; they don�t represent answers but are, rather, attempts to express insights.�
--Joseph Campbell
"What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul."
--Joseph Addison
�In the old ways�an ageless kind of knowing and being�there is no place to which one can (nor would want to) retreat or stand back to get a look at The Sacred. There is no getting out of the way or away from The Sacred. The Sacred is the real, the place and source of the power and joy in living, the source of meaning. And the nature of the real includes sacred Me, sacred You, sacred All�all interrelated and inseparable from one another.�
--Donna Wilshire, in Virgin Mother Crone: Myths and Mysteries of the Triple Goddess
"No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions."
--Charles P. Steinmetz
"I like nonsense-- it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope... and that enables you to laugh at all of life's realities."
--Theodore S. Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
"Education is a better safe-guard of liberty than a standing army."
--Edward Everett
"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you have worked on your own corner."
--Aldous Huxley
"What you think of yourself is much more important than what others think of you."
--Seneca
"I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature."
--President Thomas Jefferson
"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while, he knows something."
--Wilson Mizner
"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience."
--Goethe
"I am not a teacher, but an awakener."
--Robert Frost
"We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch."
--Lewis Thomas
"A teacher affects eternity; no one can tell where his influence stops."
--Henry Adams
"Sometimes you must fight when there is no hope of victory for it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
--Sir Winston Churchill
"The greatest natural resource that any country can have is its children."
--Danny Kaye (my mother's all-time favorite actor)
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young."
--Henry Ford
"In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General Government."
--Thomas Jefferson in his Second Inaugural Address, 1805
"One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat."
--Woodrow Wilson
"A just government has no need for the clergy or the church.
The fruits of Christianity are pride, and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; and in both clergy and laity, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
--James Madison
"Even if it's a little thing, do something for those who have need of help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it."
--Albert Schweitzer
"Our greatest glory consistes not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
--Oliver Goldsmith
"Knowledge without practice is but half a person."
-- English Proverb
"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well."
--Aristotle
"We cannot discover new oceans unless we have the courage to lose sight of the shore."
--Anonymous
"I was a new-born vampire, weeping at the beauty of the night."
--Louis in Interview with the Vampire
"You cannot kindle a fire in any other heart until it is burning in your own."
--Anonymous
"Indeed, when religious people quarrel about religion, or hungry people quarrel about victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them."
--Benjamin Franklin
"Better to do a little well than a great deal poorly. Life's greatest adventure is in doing one's level best."
--Arthur Morgan (who I am willing to bet is not a Gemini...)
"Will you walk the road to your destiny, or must the Gods drag you to it unwilling?"
--from The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
"Half our mistakes in life arise from feeling where we ought to thing, and thinking when we ought to feel."
--John Churton Collins
"A woman's issues of soul cannot be treated by carving her into a more acceptable form as defined by an unconscious culture, nor can she be bent into a more intellectually acceptable shape by those who claim to be the sole bearers of consciousness."
--from Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Est�s, Ph.D
"And if I should shun
Every woman for one,
Whose image must fill my whole breast;
Whom I must prefer,
And sigh but for her,
What an insult 'twould be to the rest!
--"To the sighing Strephon" by George Gordon, Lord Byron
"I count my suffering as light when I reflect on the blessings that [come] with it. Our earthly joys carry with them a measure of pain. The Mother sends both light and darkness, but She is not capricious. May Her law be written in my heart."
--from The Moon Beneath Her Feet by Clysta Kinstler.
"The bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion."
--President Abraham Lincoln
"...[I]t is the understanding graven in the heart that is wisdom. Can you learn the ways of the herbs from a book? It is not enough to be told. You must seek out the plants yourself, handle them, watch them grow. Then you can use them for healing, for their spirits will speak to you."
--Marion Zimmer Bradley in The Forest House
"At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can't be done, then they see it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries before."
--Frances Hodgson Burnett in The Secret Garden
"For us, warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another's life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity."
--Sitting Bull
"The hocus-pocus phantasy of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs."
--Thomas Jefferson
"Ah, yes, divorce......., from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet."
--Robin Williams
"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."
--Abraham Lincoln after Willie Lincoln's death
"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, allof which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."
--James Madison
"The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense."
-- Thomas Paine
"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."
--Treaty of Tripoli (1797) drafted by Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul, and signed by John Adams
"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
--Oscar Wilde
"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?"
--John Adams
"Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself."
--Mark Twain
"Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least
they can find Kuwait."
--A. Whitney Brown
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
--John Adams
"Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography."
--Paul Rodriguez
"We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power ...we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society."
--John Adams
"Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right to religious freedom ...The tendency of the spirit of the age is strong toward religious liberty."
--John Quincy Adams
"In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind ..."
--Samuel Adams in The Rights of the Colonists
"What you should say to outsiders that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our Association than an atheist. When our platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself shall not stand upon it."
--Kathleen Barry in Susan B. Anthony: A Biography
"I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion."
--James Buchanan
"All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible with liberty."
--Henry Clay
"In this country there is no alliance between church and state, no established religion, no tolerated religion-for toleration results from establishment-but religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution and consecrated by the social compact."
--DeWitt Clinton
"My Mom said she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. I said, 'Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.'"
--Paula Poundstone
"The sole purpose and effect of it [Article VI] is to exclude persecution and to secure the important right of religious liberty."
--Oliver Ellsworth
"I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled."
--Millard Fillmore
"[The Rev. Mr. Whitefield] used, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard."
--from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography
"In 1850, I believe, the church property in the United States, which paid no tax, amounted to $87 million. In 1900, without a check, it is safe to say, this property will reach a sum exceeding $3 billion. I would suggest the taxation of all property equally."
--Ulysses S. Grant
"If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would
be dead."
--Johnny Carson
"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate."
--Ulysses S. Grant
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must believe?"
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dufief, April 19, 1814
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."
--Thomas Jefferson
"No man [should] be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor [should he] be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor ... otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief... All men [should] be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and ... the same [should] in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
--Thomas Jefferson
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites."
--Thomas Jefferson
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."
--Thomas Jefferson
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
--Thomas Jefferson
"Mr. Lincoln was not a Christian."
--Mary Todd Lincoln
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political
tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient allies."
--James Madison
In no instance have ... the churches been guardians of the liberties of people."
--James Madison
"A just government, instituted to perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy."
--James Madison
"A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal
skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that
study:----Duh."
--Conan O'Brien
"That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution rages among some, and to their eternal infamy the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such a business."
--James Madison
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
--James Madison
"All national institutions of churches appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
--Thomas Paine
"There is scarcely any part of science, or anything in nature, which those imposters and blasphemers of science, called priests, as well Christians as Jews, have not, at some time or other, perverted, or sought to pervert to the purpose of superstition and falsehood."
--Thomas Paine
"Everything wonderful in appearance has been ascribed to angels, to devils, or to saints. Everything ancient has some legendary tale annexed to it. The common operations of nature have not escaped their practice of corrupting everything."
--Thomas Paine
"No falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith."
--Thomas Paine
"The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion."
--Thomas Paine
"Yet this is trash that the Church imposes upon the world as the Word of God; this is the collection of lies and contradictions called the Holy Bible! this is the rubbish called Revealed Religion!"
--Thomas Paine
"It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects.... that it was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject."
-- Justice Joseph Story
"Let it be henceforth proclaimed to the world that man's conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God."
-- John Tyler
"Nine Words the Eclectic Rede Attest
Steal what works, fix what's broke, forget the rest."
--author unknown
"Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair."
--George Burns
"Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove."
--Ashleigh Brilliant
"To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making."
--Otto von Bismarck
"When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us."
--Alexander Graham Bell
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."
--Aesop
"Wallets are the fabricated items into which we put
our fabricated money, which most people believe to be
their possession of the realest value."
--T. Sachs
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