FAVOURITE QUOTES

On Perspective

• "We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering." Carl Sagan

On Atheism

• An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated." Madalyn Murray O'Hair

On God

• “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Stephen Robert
• "If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?" George Deacon
• "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful, without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom too?" Douglas Adams
• "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars." Charles Darwin
• "We are all atheists about most of the Gods humanity has ever believed in, some of us just go one God further". Richard Dawkins
• "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" Epicurus

On Life & Death

• "An unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates
• “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." George Bernard Shaw
• "Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude." Denis Waitley
• "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for something." African Proverb
• "Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where is it going to end?" Tom Stoppard

On Wonder

• “I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.” Pearl S. Buck
• “A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.” Carl Sagan
• "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” Albert Einstein
• "Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering." Arthur C. Clarke

On Good & Evil

• "To the questions 'What is Good?'…the answer can only be: 'The considered life - free, creative, informed and chosen, a life of achievement and fulfilment, or pleasure and understanding, of love and friendship; in short, the best human life is a human world, humanely lived." AC Grayling (right)
• "Can you name, first; a good deed done by a religious person that could not have been done by an unreligious one; and second; a bad deed done by a religious person that would not have been done by an unreligious one?" Christopher Hitchens
• "Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?'; Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?'; Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'; But Conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'" Margot Wallström

On Values

• "Throughout history, above and beyond the fray of competing political parties or rival economic powers, one constant force has remained: the enduring strength of human values. The common desire by all people to give meaning to life transcends our differences based on race, gender, ethnicity, language, economic condition or political expression. No matter who we are, or where we come from, we seek to find fulfilment and peace in life. Values, then, are our road markers along the way. They are the basis for the simplest and the most profound steps we take in life. They enable us to know the right way from the wrong one -- and if we are strong, to choose the first route, albeit an often longer road. If our decisions are truly guided by values, we are more likely to find harmony within ourselves, our homes and families, our neighborhoods and nations. Individual honor and mutual respect, justice, solidarity, and love -- these are the core values we take from our elders, and seek to pass on to our children." Ambassador Juan Somavia

On Faith 

• "Faith is the acceptance of ideas in the absence of evidence and in defiance of logic." Craig Biddle
• "Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions." Frater Ravus
• "The belief in a single truth is the root cause for all evil in the world." Max Born  
• "With Faith Life is Simple." Bumper sticker seen in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
• "I've been fascinated by the recent spate of books casting doubt on religious faith, as if religion meant believing six impossible things before breakfast. Well, religion is a matter of holding certain beliefs, but that's not the only or even the most important thing about it. Religion is also about ritual; and ritual is about taking certain beliefs and making them real in the way we behave." Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks

On Religion

• "Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet." Napoleon Bonaparte
• "Religion, like water, may be free, but when they pipe it to you, you've got to help pay for the piping. And the piper." Abigail Van Buren
• "When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion." Abraham Lincoln
• "Christ either deceived mankind... was himself deluded... or he was divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma."  John Duncan
• "The finality of death is the coldest truth one must face. Religion makes the perfect distraction." Anonymous
• "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Carl Sagan (right)
• "If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion." Edmond de Goncourt
• "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." Richard Dawkins
• "All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead... I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of 'prejudice' or 'ignorance', but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal. When you demand 'respect', you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade." Johann Hari
• "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction."  Blaise Pascal
• "A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."  Oscar Wilde (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills)
• "What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof." Christopher Hitchens

On Science, Reason & Truth

• "The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science … We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organized ignorance …" Richard Dawkins
• "The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born."  Mark Twain ("Biography")
• "Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death... Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which man has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky. But rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it."  Bertrand Russell ("Why I am Not a Christian")
• "The only source of knowledge is experience."  Albert Einstein

On Humanism

• "Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead." Kurt Vonnegut
• "The Humanist view of life is progressive and optimistic, in awe of human potential, living without fear of judgement and death, finding enough purpose and meaning in life, love and leaving a good legacy." Polly Toynbee (President of the BHA)
• "Ethics cannot be based upon our obligations toward [people], but they are complete and natural only when we feel this Reverence for Life and the desire to have compassion for and to help all creatures insofar as it is in our power. I think that this ethic will become more and more recognized because of its great naturalness and because it is the foundation of a true humanism toward which we must strive if our culture is to become truly ethical." Albert Schweitzer
• "Humanism will affirm life rather than deny it, seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from it, and endeavor to establish the conditions of satisfactory life for all, not merely for the few." Humanist Manifesto (1933)
• "Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid."  Marcus Aurelius (right)

On People

•  “The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it.” Albert Einstein
•  “There are three classes of people: those who see; those who see when they are shown; those who do not see.”  Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian draftsman, painter, sculptor, architect and engineer whose genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.