The SECOND Book of PROVERBS

Cary's contribution to the Torah

This contains stuff that I find cool, relevant, or significantly absurd. But admittedly I made it mainly to keep a record of my own mental evolution. If you want to contribute, email me your wisdom. I'll probably think it's crap, but you never know.

year	name	profound wisdom
c.470bc	Aeschylus	God loves to help him who strives to help himself. (fragment #223)
c.467bc	Aeschylus	The worst enemy is one that fears the gods. (Seven Against Thebes)
	Aiken, Howard	Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
2009	Allen, Fred	There are many things in life that are more important than money. And they all cost money.
400?	Augustine	Augustine is asked: "How do I know I exist?" -- Replies: "Who's asking?"
2007	Banville, John	Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him. (Max Morden, The Sea)
1775	Beaumarchais, Pierre de	Nowadays what isn't worth saying is sung. (Le Barbier de Seville, act II, scene I.) (often attributed to Voltaire)
	Blake, William	I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.
	Blake, William	I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me.
1996	Brihaspati	That man who regards all creatures as his own self, and behaves towards them as towards his own self, laying aside the rod of chastisement and completely subjugating his wrath, succeeds in attaining to happiness. (Mahabharata Book 13 (Anusasana Parva) Section CXIII)
1996	Bryson, George L.	CALVINISM: You will be saved or damned for eternity because you were saved or damned from eternity.
	Sir Richard Francis Burton	The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
199?	Carlin, George	I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
1997	Carlin, George	I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don't have as many people who believe it.
1997	Carlin, George	Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you!
1836	Carlyle, Thomas	Truth! though the heavens crush me for following her. (Sartor Resartus, bk. II, ch. 7)
479-221	Confucius?	Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you. (Analects 15:23)
?	Connolly, Cyril	Better to write for yourself, and have no public-than to write for the public, and have no self.
1971 - c.1987	Cook, Cary	After I turned Christian in early 71, my thoughts were jumbled and irrational, because rationality was the enemy of my faith. It remained like that until I started learning critical thinking from Christian apologists.
1972	Cook, Cary	He who is not grounded in the Word shall be floored in the fellowship.
1974	Cook, Cary	Some truth is not worth the price of understanding it.
1977	Cook, Cary	Formality for the sake of appearance is hypocritical. Formality for the sake of obedience is not.
1978	Cook, Cary	Is there a place in the Kingdom of God where questions don't exist? Would I be allowed to live there? Would I like it if I did?
1978	Cook, Cary	I would rather die with unrealistic ideals than survive in a meaningless reality. But to go on living with unrealistic ideals is intolerable.
1982	Cook, Cary	The Kingdom of God is built out of the ambitions of forgiven thieves.
1982	Cook, Cary	The most blatant of all liars is he who believes his lie to be for the glory of God.
1985	Cook, Cary	The pretense of knowing God. Is life worth so great a lie? Or is life doomed without it?
1986	Cook, Cary	Nothing produces spiritual changes faster than the anticipation of death.
1986	Cook, Cary	Spiritual growth is fastest in an atmosphere of uncertainty.
1987	Cook, Cary	Bullshit is anesthetic. Without that anesthetic, the horror of reality is unbearable.
1987	Cook, Cary	Spiritual maturity is getting your priorities straight and keeping them straight under pressure.
1987	Cook, Cary	Better to adopt those values which will ultimately lead to satisfaction, and allow yourself enough hypocrisy to live with them, than to adopt those values which will ultimately lead to torment, and adhere to them with perfect integrity.
1987	Cook, Cary	Christians love to admit they are sinners, but hate to admit they are selfish.
1987	Cook, Cary	Requirements of God must take precedence over requirements of personal integrity. Otherwise intelligent beings would annihilate each other over conflicting ideologies.
1987	Cook, Cary	Better to be in God's will and unhealthy, than to be out of God's will and healthy.
1987	Cook, Cary	If you act in accordance with what you believe, you will find out if what you believe is true. If you don't act in accordance with what you believe, you may go thru your entire life believing lies and never know it.
1987	Cook, Cary	When God chooses to communicate, any idiot can understand Him. When God is not communicating, many idiots will put words in His mouth.
1987	Cook, Cary	The only religious act I can perform without hypocrisy is service.
1988	Cook, Cary	PRIME OBJECTIVE: to find out from personal experience: 1. that God pays off on His promises. 2. that life is worthwhile within the perimeter of His rules.
1988	Cook, Cary	Submitting to the lordship of Christ is like submitting to brainwashing. Truth, reality, and sanity are being redefined.
1988	Cook, Cary	The only way universal peace can be established is by voluntarily submitting to whatever government has the most legitimate claim to supremacy.
1988	Cook, Cary	Most scripture was never designed to guide the spiritually minded, but to restrain the carnally minded.
1989	Cook, Cary	You don't read a billboard with a microscope.
1989	Cook, Cary	Nothing is so obvious that it can't be ignored for the sake of sound theology.
1989	Cook, Cary	Life is not worth living in the kingdom of any god who doesn't make life worth living.
1990	Cook, Cary	Being right is not enough. No matter how obviously correct I am, people will ignore the truth of what I say unless they see benefit in it for themselves.
1990	Cook, Cary	Are they truly seeking answers? Or are they just reciting ritualized questions for the sake of religious catharsis?
1990	Cook, Cary	They said, "you can't out-give God." Bullshit! God can be out-given by anyone who is fool enough to try.
1992	Cook, Cary	I can live with a God who is a benevolent liar. But I can't live with a God who is an honest slave driver.
1992	Cook, Cary	If you have to become what you hate in order to get what you want, even if you get it, you paid too much.
1993	Cook, Cary	If you "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness," be careful. There is no marker at the point of no return.
1994	Cook, Cary	Anyone who thinks submitting to a spiritually tyrannical God will save your soul doesn't know soul from Shinola.
1994	Cook, Cary	Socrates once said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." The bastard never told us the examined life isn't worth anything either.
1994	Cook, Cary	Consistency is a hobgoblin only to small minds.
1994	Cook, Cary	A change of spiritual location is often accompanied by illness.
1994	Cook, Cary	Apparently God can live with all manner of repentant scum, but can't tolerate honest disagreement on matters of principle.
1995	Cook, Cary	Christianity is submitting to voluntary slavery for the goal of a satisfaction that may not exist, but sure as hell doen't exist anywhere else.
1995	Cook, Cary	When one is logically forced to conclude something intuitively unacceptable, one must either conclude that a premise is incorrect or abandon common sense.
1995	Cook, Cary	God has a long established tradition of doing what He's never done before.
1995	Cook, Cary	There is no such thing as liberty and justice for all. Liberty for all means some are deprived of justice. Justice for all means some are deprived of liberty.
1995	Cook, Cary	It's more honorable to go to hell with integrity than go to heaven without it.
1996	Cook, Cary	Thought happens.
1996	Cook, Cary	If I can't talk straight and make it in life - fuck life.
1996	Cook, Cary	The purpose of theory is to explain experience, not to force a reinterpretation of it.
1996	Cook, Cary	Don't ask me who I'm voting for, when I don't even know if I'm voting for God.
1996	Cook, Cary	Familiarity breeds contempt only when at least one of the parties is worthy of it.
1996	Cook, Cary	I'd rather be a happy dog than an unhappy god.
1996	Cook, Cary	Mercy is a counterbalance to law, not to justice. Mercy is necessary to achieve justice, only because law is imperfect. When justice is perfect, mercy is unjust.
1997	Cook, Cary	Talking straight attracts the people I want to attract, and repels the people I want to repel.
1997	Cook, Cary	Truth seekers always clarify issues. Salesmen & lawyers clarify when they are right, and obscure when they are wrong. Politicians & theologians always obscure, because anything they say that's clear can be used against them later. Professional philosophers complicate issues in order to expand simple statements into books.
1997	Cook, Cary	What is a man profited if he gains the whole kingdom of God and loses his integrity?
1997	Cook, Cary	I was at a Unity meeting. They sang, "Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me." I thought, "Let truth prevail if it kills every one of us."
1997	Cook, Cary	No matter how obviously right I am, people rarely agree with me. But they often end up saying the same things I say, as though they thought of it.
1998	Cook, Cary	I fear God, but not as much as I fear the possibility that God may be unjust. An unjust God is not worth fearing, even if He roasts you in hell forever.
1998	Cook, Cary	Spiritual pride is an unavoidable consequence of the knowledge that you are doing your best. If you're not proud, you could be doing better, and you know it. (But if you are proud, it may be for dumb reasons.)
1998	Cook, Cary	Admitting evil, no matter how dishonorable, is more honorable than masking evil.
1998	Cook, Cary	Any God salesman is probably a liar. Even if he is honest, his God is probably a liar. But you either trust God, and risk being cheated, or make the best of nihilism.
1998	Cook, Cary	The only pleasure that doesn't cost more than it's worth is food - unless you're fat.
1998	Cook, Cary	Faith is not the substance of anything. It is the simple decision to gamble. It is identified in what is bet on, and measured in how much is risked.
1998	Cook, Cary	How typical of Biblical inerrantists to deny the existence of common sense, non-statistical probability, and burden of proof! Do they plan to spend eternity evading the obvious in favor of conclusions logically forced from their fear based premises? How I do hate living in a world where such people are the most logical company I can find!
1998	Cook, Cary	The church encourages Christians to lie, e.g. to sing words they don't mean, to claim knowledge they don't have, to pretend to think what they don't think, to express emotions they don't feel, and to justify it all under the banner of attitude. Yet somehow God seems to prefer their lies to my loveless honesty.
1998	Cook, Cary	If eternal damnation were just, why would God create a world full of creatures who all think it's unjust except for a minority of those who believe Him? Why would He create us with values which are in conflict with His own?
1998	Cook, Cary	Theists are likely to be more honest than atheists in business because theists fear God. Theists are likely to be dishonest about their experience of God for the same reason.
1998	Cook, Cary	Science is neutral. It takes a religion to oppose a religion.
1998	Cook, Cary	Exceptions don't prove rules. Exceptions prove exceptions.
1998	Cook, Cary	When appearance conflicts with revelation, I can choose to trust revelation, but I cannot help thinking that appearance is probably correct.
1998	Cook, Cary	EGOCENTRIC GOLDEN RULE: Behave in a manner that makes you worthy of the life you want. If there's justice, you'll get it. If not, nothing matters anyway.
1998	Cook, Cary	Despair is better than futile hope. Why? - because it kills you quicker.
1998	Cook, Cary	No one can be trusted to tell you the truth about God - no man, no institution, no book, not even what appears to be God Himself. You either find out by personal experience, or remain ignorant.
1998	Cook, Cary	I cannot be what I think God wants me to be. I can fake it, but I can't be it. I think God wants me to fake it. And I'm refusing without apology. I will not build my eternal life on a lie - not even a God-authorized lie.
1998	Cook, Cary	There appears to be a serious conflict between the God who created my concept of good & evil and the God who reveals Himself to me. If no actual conflict exists, I pray for correction. If the conflict is real, I choose the former God.
1998	Cook, Cary	Truth is nobody's primary value. Worthwhile life is everybody's primary value. Truth matters only in so much as it is necessary to get to worthwhile life and stay there. Let anyone who claims to love truth acknowledge that this is truth.
1998	Cook, Cary	Seeking truth is different from defending what you believe to be true.
1998	Cook, Cary	He who loves lies. He who doesn't lie doesn't love. God is no exception.
1998	Cook, Cary	Faith is perception distorted by emotion. Faith at its best is inductive reasoning based on data selected by emotion. Faith at its worst is assumption based on emotion. Faith is training wheels for those who haven't figured it out. Faith is a condom for horny minds who fear catching nihilism.
1998	Cook, Cary	If a principle you assert belies a principle by which you operate, you are either asserting an untruth, or behaving hypocritically or both.
1999	Cook, Cary	There are no divinely authorized lies. But there is a divinely authorized church which authorizes lies.
1999	Cook, Cary	Where truth is terrifying, the pursuit of truth is social exile. Truth ceases to be frightening when one realizes that fearing it is stupid.
1999	Cook, Cary	Eternal damnation is no reason to fear an unjust God. But fear of eternal damnation is the greatest blessing a world of criminals could ask for.
1999	Cook, Cary	A just God would never punish anyone for what he believes or fails to believe, but neither would He allow into a community committed to justice anyone who is not committed to justice.
1999	Cook, Cary	If you seek a righteous God, then act in a manner worthy of a righteous God. Only those who are willing to defy an unrighteous God are worthy of a righteous God.
1999	Cook, Cary	The God of an inerrant Bible cannot possibly exist, because he inspired the appearance of errors, but is not the author of confusion.
1999	Cook, Cary	When the truth or falsity of any given proposition is discernible by personal experience, the contradictory testimony of other people, no matter how great their number or credentials, is irrelevant.
2000	Cook, Cary	The only necessary trinity: Creator - middle management - us
2000	Cook, Cary	The Kingdom of God is like a sausage. If you want to partake of it, don't ask how it was made.
2001	Cook, Cary	What kind of God would program noble values into a person, and then bully him into sycophancy?
2002	Cook, Cary	Only an evil god would allow his creation's good & evil evaluator to become corrupt and then judge him by an uncorrupted standard. A righteous god would judge his creature by the creature's standard, and change that standard if he doesn't like it.
2002	Cook, Cary	KNOWLEDGE: that faculty by which a mind accepts the existence of truth, and its own ability to distinguish it from non truth.
2002	Cook, Cary	Humility is not a virtue. It is a social expedient to facilitate solicitation.
2002	Cook, Cary	Believe the lies that feed you? I prefer to starve.
2002	Cook, Cary	The God you serve is the God you deserve.
2002	Cook, Cary	The most popular compensation for lack of integrity is a good attitude. I don't do attitudes; I do ethics.
2002	Cook, Cary	Emotional attachment to the truth or falsity of any proposition hinders ones judgment of the truth or falsity of that proposition.
2002	Cook, Cary	Optimism and pessimism are both deviations from realism. And realism is the only ism that's realistic.
2002	Cook, Cary	Truth seekers never complicate issues. If in any dispute, you find that you are introducing unnecessary complications, you are not seeking the truth in that issue.
2002	Cook, Cary	Knowledge of truth is frightening. If you don't desire it more than you fear it, there is no reason to pursue it.
2003	Cook, Cary	No matter how stupid their faith is, if you attack it without offering something better in its place, you're just a child molester.
2003	Cook, Cary	Part of being a good philosopher is refraining from the pretense of knowing more than you know. But if you do that, you will never get a job teaching philosophy - in my opinion.
2003	Cook, Cary	The main distinction between a truth seeker and a religionist is that when a particular truth cannot be known, nor statistical probability ascertained, a truth seeker will choose common sense probability, and a religionist will choose to err on the side of perceived safety.
2003	Cook, Cary	Nothing is so clear that a good philosopher can't find a way to misunderstand it. If I speak clearly enough for anyone with common sense to understand me, they will object to some vagueness or ambiguity in my terms. If I define my terms and speak precisely, it will be so tedious that no normal person could understand me, much less a philosopher.
2003	Cook, Cary	Philosophy is the effort to discover truth. It is achieved by applying critical thinking to personal experience. The effort to figure out what other philosophers are saying is not philosophy. It is meta-philosophy.
2003	Cook, Cary	If you have to pretend to be what you're not in order to sustain a relationship, it is only a matter of time before that relationship costs more than it is worth. Relationship with God is no exception.
2003	Cook, Cary	It is evil to create evil. If you create free will beings, some of them will become evil. The only way to create free will beings without becoming evil is to influence them such that the good they do outweighs the evil. Such influence will necessarily be in the form of reward & punishment.
2003	Cook, Cary	Logic cannot tell you that logic is reliable, because logic tells you that circular reasoning is unreliable. You need common sense to tell you logic is reliable.
2003	Cook, Cary	Communication is possible only within that set of parameters on which the communicants agree.
2003	Cook, Cary	Personal beings are all by nature frustrated. They want more than they have. The Supreme Being is no exception.
2003	Cook, Cary	There are some things so obvious that only a fool or a philosopher can fail to see them.
2003	Cook, Cary	The right to do any particular thing implies the right to do anything that is necessary to do that thing. But it does not imply the right to do similar things, greater things, or even lesser things.
2003	Cook, Cary	I was conversing with my ass this morning. Once again it reminded me that despite my lofty ideals, I am still basically a digestive tube.
2003	Cook, Cary	"Sinner saved by grace" is a decent way to begin an eternal life. But no God would finance it, and no sentient creature would want to remain in it very long. Christianity may have been designed by God to be intellectually repugnant, so that intellectuals would outgrow it.
2003	Cook, Cary	Principles necessarily come into conflict unless prioritized. Even then they sometimes produce unjust results unless tempered by an outside factor such as common sense.
2003	Cook, Cary	There are some who measure faith by the stupidity of the belief rather than the amount invested in it.
2003	Cook, Cary	A person who is offended by the non-threatening content of another person's honest expression deserves to be offended.
2003	Cook, Cary	Any truth, no matter how obvious, is easily obscured by one whose world view is threatened by it.
2004	Cook, Cary	I have never liked being alone. But if I must be alone, I prefer to be alone by myself.
2004	Cook, Cary	I? Swallow a camels? But look how many gnats I've strained!
2004	Cook, Cary	The fact that your worldview gives you a knowledge claiming license does not imply that you actually know what your worldview allows you to claim to know.
2004	Cook, Cary	A philosopher's best friend is his most competent opponent.
2004	Cook, Cary	There ought to be a connection between "is" and "ought", but there isn't.
2004	Cook, Cary	No matter how stupid the faith, to kick the props out from under it without offering something better to replace it is tantamount to child molestation.
2004	Cook, Cary	If your quality of life is better than you deserve, you will adjust to it either by losing your undeserved benefits, or losing your taste for justice.
2004	Cook, Cary	The vagueness of a category's boundaries does not negate its existence. Vagueness merely raises a question as to the inclusion or exclusion of some things as members.
2004	Cook, Cary	When the truth or falsity of a given proposition cannot be known, and there is insufficient data to judge probabilities, and you must act as though it is true or false, then its truth or falsity should be judged pragmatically.
2004	Cook, Cary	The truth or falsity of any given proposition is: 1. totally independent of the purpose for which it is said. 2. unaffected by the consequences of saying it, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant those consequences may be. 3. irrelevant to those whose decisions would remain the same either way.
2005	Cook, Cary	The God who created you is at least as wise as you are. If you find yourself worshipping a God who is not as wise as you are, assume not that you should dumb down to accommodate Him, but rather that you should wise up.
2005	Cook, Cary	To have faith in a proposition is to abandon the effort to seek the truth of that proposition.
2005	Cook, Cary	The truth or falsity of any declarative statement remains unaffected by the purpose for which it is made.
2005	Cook, Cary	When God Himself appears to be challenging your theological premises, He may be trying to correct them, and He may be testing your resolve. You don't know which. The Bible tells us to hold fast to what we have been taught. I say it is better to admit what you honestly believe, pray for correction, and see what happens.
2005	Cook, Cary	Nothing is so epistemologically inescapable that it cannot be overruled by emotion.
2005	Cook, Cary	Faith in any lie is better than nihilism, but only until its falsity is exposed. Faith in an exposed lie is worse than nihilism.
2006	Cook, Cary	I really enjoy doing righteous stuff that doesn't cost me anything.
2006	Cook, Cary	The best literary criticism is not necessarily the harshest, but it is almost always the most irritating.
2006	Cook, Cary	I hate being a Christian like I hate being a Republican. In both cases, they are just the least disgusting of the available options.
2007	Cook, Cary	There are two kinds of people in the world - those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't. If you deny that there are two kinds of people in the world, you may be rational. But if you deny that people can be divided into two categories, you're wrong.
2007	Cook, Cary	We all act in our own self interest. Our only moral differences are in what we believe to be in our best interest, and the amount of delay we are willing to tolerate before gratification.
2007	Cook, Cary	Love and loyalty are often euphemisms for an exchange of unjust favors.
2007	Cook, Cary	I can become a good person simply by choosing to. But to remain a good person without becoming a sanctimonious asshole is beyond my ability.
2007	Cook, Cary	I can be tortured into the pretense of loving my torturer. But until then, I am resolved to talk straight and take what comes of it. I have yet to see a God I love.
2007	Cook, Cary	About 3 decades ago, I adopted a policy of, "talk straight and take what comes of it." If I had not adopted that policy I never could have written Abram. Now that I've written it, I don't intend to abandon that policy in order to sell it.
2007	Cook, Cary	Abram: Saying something that people don't yet know they need to hear. I'm trying to sell a cure to people who don't know they're diseased. It's hard to persuade people to take a step toward sanity when they think they're already sane.
2007	Cook, Cary	In politics, when you find all the parties disgusting, you can always register as an independent. In religion, I have not found God to be so accommodating. For this reason alone, I'm Christian.
2007	Cook, Cary	I'd rather be sanctimonious than unethical. I've found no third alternative.
2007	Cook, Cary	For all I know, there may be people living today who like Shakespeare. But I am certain that there are people who pretend to like Shakespeare just to impress other people who pretend to like Shakespeare.
2007	Cook, Cary	If you think you probably should do X, then you necessarily should do X, even if the end result of X shows that you should not have done X. Epistemological "should" is unrelated to ontological "should".
2007	Cook, Cary	Failure to do a sufficient amount of good deeds makes you feel evil. Doing a sufficient amount of good deeds makes you feel righteous. Exceeding that amount makes you feel stupid.
2007	Cook, Cary	My regret at offending those who don't deserve it is generally outweighed by the joy of offending those who do.
2007	Cook, Cary	Switched from Republican to independent. I just wish God offered such an option.
2007	Cook, Cary	I'm a Goldwater Christian: I'd rather be right than saved.
2007	Cook, Cary	The 2 basic choices of sentient life are nihilism or non-nihilism. Morally conscious persons prefer non-nihilism, which requires faith in a particular explanation of how it is the case. But once a morally conscious person figures out that non-nihilism is the only sensible bet, no faith is required to bet on it and all of its pre-requisites - primarily a just God. Faith in a particular explanation is epistemologically unnecessary, but so far, I've found it spiritually necessary. i.e. Refraining from commitment causes unacceptable stress.
2007	Cook, Cary	Allying with a faction requires either a lot of moral certitude or a lot of self interest.
2007	Cook, Cary	Faith in any particular thing should be a theory to be tested, not a lifetime commitment to be clung to regardless of its consequences.
2007	Cook, Cary	Rules don't bend. People bend in order to break them without calling it what it is.
2007	Cook, Cary	Religion at its best is a search for the least stupid alternative to nihilism.
2007	Cook, Cary	Never put anything in your shirt pocket that will cause you distress if it falls out when you lean over to flush a toilet.
2007	Cook, Cary	There is an important difference between truth seekers and lie exposers. Truth seekers look for truth. Lie exposers look for lies.
2007	Cook, Cary	Truth seekers, question lovers, and argument lovers are all separate categories. When they overlap, it is only coincidental.
2007	Cook, Cary	It's not easy to overcome one's fear of an evil God, and still maintain proper respect for the God with whom one must deal.
2008	Cook, Cary	A less correct theory that you can relate to is often more beneficial than a more correct theory that you can't relate to.
2008	Cook, Cary	A man once told me he was trying to understand my position. But our discourse revealed that he was just trying to fit it into a category he already understood, even after it was shown to be outside those categories.
2008	Cook, Cary	Any creature that is going to be rewarded or punished for its behavior has an inalienable right to have its behavior corrected if it asks for correction.
2008	Cook, Cary	The kind of men who say, "all men are pigs," actually are pigs who try to justify being pigs by saying all men are like them.
2008	Cook, Cary	Proven existence of a pattern does not prove it continues beyond where it is proven to exist.
2008	Cook, Cary	If I did everything I should do before starting, I could never start.
2008	Cook, Cary	I will not be bound by the childish concept of God required by my ancestors, or by any of the adolescent attempts to upgrade that childish concept. My Creator designed me to think, and I will think without apology. But there remains that invisible line, the other side of which is error, and some errors are costly. I need correction from outside. I assume that asking God for such correction is sufficient. It appears to have worked so far.
2008	Cook, Cary	Possibly I'm prejudiced, but it appears that among all the Semites, the Jews are the only ones with a sense of humor.
2008	Cook, Cary	If doing good does not ultimately benefit the doer of it, there is ultimately no reason to do it.
2008	Cook, Cary	Justice is, and should be, dependent on economics. No person, community, or nation should be required to grant any individual more justice than it is worth to those who pay for the legal system that provides it.
2008	Cook, Cary	Nothing screws up a person's sense of justice more than faith in an unjust God.
2008	Cook, Cary	The worst thing about being perfectly correct is that by the time the world figures it out, you'll probably be dead.
2008	Cook, Cary	Most people start out as truth-seekers. But they drop out one by one as they see what it's going to cost them.
2008	Cook, Cary	People who want to know truth can learn to figure out anything figureoutable. People who don't want to know truth cannot be forced to recognize even the most obvious elements of it.
2008	Cook, Cary	No one would ever be disillusioned if lying bastards didn't fill them full of illusions in the first place.
2008	Cook, Cary	Nothing is more expensive than integrity - mine, not theirs.
2008	Cook, Cary	If you desire a better deal than you deserve, then you deserve to live in a world full of people who desire a better deal than they deserve.
2008	Cook, Cary	Scripture is necessary to tell us that there is historical evidence of a God. But faith in that God does not imply faith in scripture as the inspired Word of that God.
2008	Cook, Cary	Existence is ontologically more important than justice, because justice needs existence in order to exist. Justice is axiologically more important than existence, because existence without justice is worse than non-existence.
2008	Cook, Cary	Sincere believers in God must learn to interpret scripture such that they are not obligated to do the evil things scripture appears to be telling them to do.
2008	Cook, Cary	I don't talk about the Quran much because there are too many fools who react irrationally when the Quran is talked about rationally. Any Muslim who reacts irrationally to that statement proves it.
2008	Cook, Cary	I don't care what you think unless I think you can help me think more correctly - or unless I think you have the sense to let me help you think more correctly. That means I don't care what most people think.
2008	Cook, Cary	Conservatives confuse tradition with ethics and law with justice. This causes liberals to put equality above ethics and love above justice.
2008	Cook, Cary	"Seek, and you will find," is necessarily true. "Seek X, and you will find X," is not necessarily true.
2008	Cook, Cary	My message is anti-bullshit. And I can't find anyone to help me sell it except professional bullshitters. They keep offering me advice on how to be a better whore.
2008	Cook, Cary	You can't know more than your epistemology allows you to know. The best epistemology allows you to know all that is knowable without allowing you to think you know anything you don't know.
2008	Cook, Cary	August 18: Jesus has just told me to shift my focus from correctness to cooperative effort with other Christians. This will be interesting because other Christians are so terribly incorrect.
2008	Cook, Cary	I can't make anyone more correct, but I can help them become as correct as they want to be. Of course, if they are already as correct as they want to be, there's no point in talking.
2008	Cook, Cary	Wrong beliefs are challenged by circumstances more often than correct beliefs are challenged. Stupid beliefs are challenged by other people more often than intelligent beliefs are challenged.
2008	Cook, Cary	There are no levels of honesty. There are, however, levels of dishonesty.
2008	Cook, Cary	The only requirements for human knowledge to exist, and logic to be reliable are a Supreme Being in whose mind knowledge & logic reside, and that this Being is either identical to or in agreement with the God who created mankind, and that the God who created mankind jumpstarted the connection between brain cells and knowledge.
2008	Cook, Cary	Two kinds of people are worth my social time: those who can teach me something, and those whom I can teach something.
2008	Cook, Cary	There's a big difference between knowing truth and learning to parrot authority figures. Most people learn to parrot authority figures, and pass it off as knowing truth. Truth is known by applying critical thinking to personal experience.
2008	Cook, Cary	The blacks are the new Jews, and the Hispanics are the new blacks. How come white men are still the assholes?
2008	Cook, Cary	If you want truthiness, nothing feels truthier than Gospel Truth. If you want truth, forget about how it feels.
2008	Cook, Cary	I would rather deserve good things and not have them, than have good things and not deserve them.
2008	Cook, Cary	All emotions and emotion based mindsets impair probability judgment. Emotion based mindsets include: optimism & pessimism, faith & cynicism.
2008	Cook, Cary	You cannot be liked and right in the land of the wrong.
2008	Cook, Cary	There are people who know how to talk integrity, but don't recognize it when they see it. I can only hope I'm not one of them.
2008	Cook, Cary	Evidence of a possibility doesn't imply evidence of a probability.
2008	Cook, Cary	It doesn't matter what the meaning of life is. We can't possibly know it, so we have to place a bet. And the only sensible bet is justice.
2008	Cook, Cary	Prov. 14:12 There is a way which seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. My response: If, in order to live, a man must abandon what seems right, what good is living? But I admit that the best philosophical position may not be in one's best interest.
2008	Cook, Cary	Don't read between the lines until you've read the lines.
2008	Cook, Cary	An ideal world can exist only in the realm of idea. Even God can't make one in extension.
2008	Cook, Cary	All other things being equal, it is moral to kill one person in order to save two people. Morality is subject to arithmetic.
2009	Cook, Cary	Humor is an alternate way of looking at what would otherwise be stupid, tragic, or disgusting.
2009	Cook, Cary	If I read something about God, I won't know if it's true until I verify it by experience. So I might as well just experiment. If I read some convoluted reasoning, I won't know if it's true until I figure it out. So I might as well just figure stuff out.
2009	Cook, Cary	Relationship with God starts with religion. But it doesn't stay there.
2009	Cook, Cary	Tell them what they want to hear, and you get rich. Tell them what they need to hear, and you get ignored.
2009	Cook, Cary	Under a just system, worthwhile life is possible only for just people. Under an unjust system, worthwhile life is possible only for unjust people.
2009	Cook, Cary	When a paradigm makes no logical sense, there's a wrong premise, either in the paradigm or in my mind.
2009	Cook, Cary	When failure to make sense is the point of the joke, and the joke is funny, you are not far from nihilism.
2009	Cook, Cary	Statements exist that are perfectly clear and obviously true. But no statement is so clear or obvious that it cannot be challenged by someone who wants to challenge it. Such people will surely challenge any defense of that statement, and are likely to do so ad nauseam.
2009	Cook, Cary	Failure to be believed is no reason to quit speaking the truth. But it is sufficient reason to abandon a stupid audience.
2009	Cook, Cary	Truth seekers pursue conclusions. Truth avoiders pursue tangents.
2009	Cook, Cary	If you'd rather be safe than right, you're neither.
2009	Cook, Cary	I don't need to know what a person deserves in order to know that I want him to get what he deserves.
2009	Cook, Cary	A Christian friend once asked, "Why are Christians stupid?" I propose it's because God designed Christianity for stupid people, knowing that the smart people would figure it out.
2009	Cook, Cary	Philosophy has been hijacked by theorists, and must be taken back by truth seekers who just figure out what's true and don't need to justify it with a theory.
2009	Cook, Cary	No person, including me, cares intrinsically about truth and/or justice. We all care about getting what we want. Those of us who care about truth and/or justice care about it extrinsically, because we believe we can't ultimately get what we want apart from the confines of truth and justice.
2009	Cook, Cary	Good & evil are not hard to figure out once you decide to figure them out rather than let other people tell you what they are. Good & evil exist subjectively and objectively. Subjective good is pleasure; subjective evil is displeasure. Objective good is disserved pleasure and disserved displeasure. Objective evil is undisserved pleasure and undisserved displeasure. What is disserved is that quantity of pleasure or displeasure that one expected to cause by his willful actions.
2009	Cook, Cary	I do not believe scripture (Bible or otherwise) to be inspired by any deity in the sense that everything in it is true, or that the directives are applicable to all generations following those to whom the books were written. I do, however, believe scripture (at least most of the Bible) to be inspired by the God to whom mankind is accountable in the sense that the directives were applicable to the generation to whom the books were written, and to a limited and/or diminishing sense applicable to succeeding generations. I also believe scripture (at least the Bible) to be inspired in the sense that God inspired men to leave a record of their efforts to understand and communicate with God, so that succeeding generations can learn from the successes and failures of their predecessors. I think this position is not only more philosophically and pragmatically defensible, but also more scripturally defensible.
2009	Cook, Cary	An author may not mean what he says. But he damn well says what he says. And what he says means something, whether the author meant it or not.
2009	Cook, Cary	Once you admit that you don't believe bullshit, being classified as an atheist comes with the territory.
2009	Cook, Cary	If you accept gifts from an unethical person, it's only a matter of time before he asks you to do something unethical in return.
2009	Cook, Cary	Without justice, love keeps things alive that would be better off dead. Without love, justice cannot sustain life.
2009	Cook, Cary	It has been my experience that "seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" leads to a disgusting quality of life, with little in return but the promise of doing well on Judgment Day. But then I haven't asked for much more than to do well on Judgment Day.
2009	Cook, Cary	If a creator (Supreme Being or otherwise) does not provide worthwhile life to those members of his creation who prove worthy of it, then that creator is evil. Proving worthy of worthwhile life does not imply never erring. It implies trying not to err, and trying to correct errors made.
2009	Cook, Cary	If God provides revelation, and doesn't make it look like revelation, He can't expect people to believe it was revelation. And He can't rightly punish a person for disbelieving that it was revelation. But a person can rightly be held accountable for obeying what he believes to be revelation. Divine revelation is relative to individuals. Any statement or set of statements is divine revelation if believing it would cause a person to conform more closely to God's will. The same statement or set of statements ceases to be divine revelation when believing it no longer has that effect.
2009	Cook, Cary	Most people have a disgusting habit of calling things what they are not. This is to be expected when they are selling stuff. But sometimes it's just to muddle issues.
2009	Cook, Cary	Indiscriminate correction of errors can itself become a moral error, because often people's errors are all that keeps them out of nihilism.
2009	Cook, Cary	A truth seeker is always on the edge of nihilism. All that keeps him from falling over that edge is an assumed connection with an assumed personal Creator who is assumed to be good.
2009	Cook, Cary	Some pain is necessary. Some pain is beneficial. And some pain is there to tell you you're doing something wrong. Only experimentation can teach you which is which.
2009	Cook, Cary	Any time you say, "X is possible," you risk being accused of saying, "X is true." If you say you believe X is true, you risk being accused of saying you know X is true.
2009	Cook, Cary	If you don't understand what I mean, I may have said it wrong. But if I said it right, and you don't understand it, you're not listening.
2009	Cook, Cary	A righteous God may require you to lie to the Gestapo, but He will never require you to lie to Him.
2009	Cook, Cary	If God loves sycophancy more than integrity, I don't want God's love.
2009	Cook, Cary	Morally correct behavior can't be overdone. But some particular morally correct actions may be done to such an extent that they are no longer morally correct. And some morally correct principles may be overdone or applied in such a way that is not morally correct.
2009	Cook, Cary	The purpose of law is to achieve justice. It doesn't always succeed. When law fails to achieve justice, one of the few people in a position to do something about it is a juror. A juror should strive for justice even if he has to violate law.
2009	Cook, Cary	The Golden Rule can be overdone. I prefer that people talk straight with me without regard for ego. Most people don't like me to do that with them.
2009	Cook, Cary	The stupidest part of a human being is ego. All of its efforts to feel superior become counter-productive when you realize that only a low self-esteemer would do that sort of thing.
2009	Cook, Cary	Never accept the necessity of illusion. Or if you must, then strive to need less of it.
2009	Cook, Cary	If you're blatantly right, the religious establishment will generally admit it – after you and everyone who called you a heretic are quite dead.
2009	Cook, Cary	In general, accuracy is more important than clarity, and clarity is more important than precision. But a less accurate paradigm that you can understand is often more beneficial than a more accurate paradigm that you can't understand.
2009	Cook, Cary	There appears to be a great difference between what is true and what I want to be true. But there is no conflict between what is true and what I want to be true, only because I choose to keep those categories separate - despite social pressure to let them merge.
2009	Cook, Cary	I would rather live in a dangerous place and enjoy living, than live in a safe place and not enjoy living. But I don't need danger to enjoy living. I do, however, need some things I don't have presently.
2009	Cook, Cary	Yes, I'm self righteous. I wish everybody were self-righteous – as long as they're righteous.
2009	Cook, Cary	The concept of infinity implies logical conclusions that violate the law of excluded middle.
2009	Cook, Cary	Some physical phenomena can't be explained without either violating the law of excluded middle, or conceding that no physical thing is what it appears to be.
2009	Cook, Cary	There's real morality and bullshit morality. Real morality excludes those actions which in principle diminish the well-being of the class of sentient beings as a whole. Bullshit morality excludes those actions which offend the prevailing power structure.
2009	Cook, Cary	I no longer care about liking people and being liked by them. I care only about helping people and being helped by them. This feels like dangerous ground. I may be going too far. I will experiment with it and find out.
2009	Cook, Cary	The fact that you can imagine a category doesn't mean you can imagine anything in it. A category exists called paradoxes. The category of paradoxes includes all and only those things which are irrational. Some imaginary things exist in the category of paradoxes, e.g. irrational numbers. It cannot be known if any non-imaginary thing exists in the category of paradoxes, because anything non-imaginary that appears to be a paradox may be a rational thing interpreted incorrectly.
2009	Cook, Cary	It is always better to help (i.e. improve) a person than to be liked by him. But some people won't let you help them unless they like you. Though a principle may be clearly correct, the application of it may require trial and error.
2009	Cook, Cary	Hell is a place where people reproduce in order to outpopulate their enemies.
2009	Cook, Cary	Intelligent company may not make you more intelligent, but rational company will make you more rational. Conversely, irrational company will make you more irrational.
2009	Cook, Cary	Complexity is often a euphemism for inconsistency.
2009	Cook, Cary	I know that I know some things. But I don't know how I know anything, because I don't know the mechanism by which stuff is known.
2009	Cook, Cary	I think thoughts beyond my pay grade, because my Creator designed me to think them. I owe Him no apology for them.
2009	Cook, Cary	When the odds appear to be in your favor, bet as much as you can afford to lose. When the odds appear to be against you, don't bet any more than you must. But when there is only one chance of winning, bet all you have on it regardless of odds.
2009	Cook, Cary	Heaven and hell are places to meet others of your own kind.
2009	Cook, Cary	Any community of people will evolve sub-communities whom the majority would be better off without.
2009	Cook, Cary	When I speak normally and say things they don't want to hear, they either misunderstand or ask for greater precision. When I speak with enough precision to eliminate all ambiguity, they accuse me of double-talk.
2009	Cook, Cary	Better to be a servant in a just world than a king in an unjust world.
2009	Cook, Cary	Justice exists as an abstract concept. General rules exist that tell us how to achieve justice. But any set of rules, followed to the letter, will produce some cases of injustice.
2009	Cook, Cary	I don't give a damn how I'm remembered in this world. I care how I do in the next one.
2009	Cook, Cary	I'm arrogant. I became arrogant when I learned critical thinking. And though I try not to express myself any more arrogantly than necessary, I would rather be blatantly arrogant, than humble but misleading.
2009	Cook, Cary	Fuck ego. Mine as well as yours. It's the basest of all motivators, it's socially destructive, and it hinders truth seeking.
2009	Cook, Cary	If the quality of your eternal life depends on believing things that appear improbable, then the creator of the system is evil.
2009	Cook, Cary	You can read books all your life, and never know if you've been told the truth. Do one experiment, and you know more than you knew before you did it.
2009	Cook, Cary	The suppression of justice by tradition rarely lasts long once it is recognized as such.
2009	Cook, Cary	Truth insults on one who doesn't deserve it.
2009	Cook, Cary	Errors warrant correction, however unpleasant it needs to be in order to correct. But the only behavior that warrants punishment is failure to do what one believes he should do.
2009	Cook, Cary	Survival of the fittest does not imply survival of those people who believe truth. It implies survival of those who believe whatever is most conducive to survival.
2009	Cook, Cary	Don't allow yourself to want something that you probably won't get unless you pretend to be what you're not.
2009	Cook, Cary	Duty is a socially imposed concept that is linked to morality only in some particular instances. No one is morally obligated to acknowledge duty as binding.
2009	Cook, Cary	After you have pushed the envelope so far that it no longer envelops anything, you must either make another envelope or accept nihilism.
2009	Cook, Cary	If you do what the Bible tells you to do, you will eventually acquire enough personal experiences that those experiences will be more reliable than anything the Bible tells you.
2009	Cook, Cary	The moral purpose of law may be to achieve justice, but the effective purpose is to benefit legislators. Only when legislators see justice as beneficial to them will they make just laws.
2009	Cook, Cary	Just as objects are attracted together, so are soul/spirits. The difference is medium vs. message. Objects are attracted by physical forces: magnetism, gravity – the medium. Souls are attracted by intellectual understanding of experienced reality – the message. Bodies of scripture are soul-magnets.
2010	Cook, Cary	A question is epistemologically unanswerable if it is illogical, unclear, or based on a false premise. Refusal to answer a question for any other reason is emotionally motivated.
2010	Cook, Cary	Reality can't be taught. It must be figured out. You can help a person figure out only those parts he wants to figure out.
2010	Cook, Cary	A spiritual error can cost years or even decades of wasted time.
2010	Cook, Cary	DO NOT CARE about arguing well! Care about being right.
2010	Cook, Cary	God designed our recognition of math, logic, probability, justice, and ethics. Though this recognition may be eclipsed by social programming and/or emotional greed, God would not design us to think one way, and then tell us to think contrary to it. If a conflict exists between what we are designed to think, and what God appears to be telling us to think, we can't be mistaken about what we are designed to think, unless we have allowed social programming and/or emotional greed to eclipse it. Otherwise we must be mistaken about what God is telling us to think. God may, however, tell us to do something we don't want to do, even though He designed us not to want to do it.
2010	Cook, Cary	Talking about a question doesn't mean you've answered it.
2010	Cook, Cary	My dreams have proven that I am basically an immoral being coerced into moral behavior by fear of punishment. I'm not ashamed of this fact, because I've no reason to think anyone else is a bit better.
2010	Cook, Cary	I can be coerced into behaving other than I now behave. But I can't be coerced into thinking other than I now think. That requires either new data, or a change in my processing ability.
2010	Cook, Cary	To have the option to terminate existence, or not to have it: *that* is the question.
2010	Cook, Cary	A thing cannot precede (logically or temporally) the parts of which it is made. Therefore the Supreme Being either has no parts, or is not made of His parts. It should not be hard to figure out that the latter is correct.
2010	Cook, Cary	A perfect worldview cannot be recognized as perfect by a finite mind. Any worldview held by a finite mind is necessarily imperfect. The best a finite mind can do is to adopt that worldview which appears to have the least amount of epistemological defects. This worldview will not necessarily be the most comfortable, or even life-supportive, because life may in fact ultimately cost more than it is worth. Worthwhile life, if it exits, can be found and sustained only by continuing to adopt that worldview which appears to be the least epistemologically defective. The least epistemologically defective worldview should be adopted even if it kills you.
2010	Cook, Cary	Living an ideology is not the same as living as a salesman for an ideology. There will be times when a salesman will have to either fake the manifestation of the ideology he is selling or lie about its benefits.
2010	Cook, Cary	I've never liked being alone. I just like it better than stupid company. And I've gotten terribly used to it.
2010	Cook, Cary	To deny the existence or efficacy of a category that is part of your own operating system is an error -- specifically a hypocritical error.
2010	Cook, Cary	If the principles by which you judge the truth of scripture are more lenient than the principles by which you judge the truth of other ancient literature, you're not looking for truth; you're looking for faith.
2010	Cook, Cary	Truth seekers are people who want to push the cutting edge of their understanding of reality. Truth seekers are not faith seekers. But truth seekers don't object to faith where truth can't be known, and faith offers pragmatic benefits.
2010	Cook, Cary	A finite mind can only tolerate a certain amount of truth at any given time. But that amount will increase if, when you are able to tolerate more, you try to find it.
2010	Cook, Cary	"That which should be" is an imaginary state of affairs that resides only in a mind.& If there is no objective mind, there is no objective "should".
2010	Cook, Cary	Recognition of truth happens one step at a time.& If you tell someone something that is perfectly true, but more than one step ahead of what he already knows, he won't recognize it as true.& Better to find out what he already knows, and help him figure out the next step.
2010	Cook, Cary	I could never make sense of the Bible until I figured out that it doesn't make sense.& Then it all made sense.
2010	Cook, Cary	'
2005?	Cosby, Bill	Dare to disassociate yourself from those who would delay your journey.
1994	Craig, Wm. Lane	Thus although arguments and evidence may be used to support the believer's faith, they are never properly the basis of faith. (Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics p34)
1994	Craig, Wm. Lane	...it is the Holy Spirit who gives us the ultimate assurance of Christian truth. Therefore, the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role. Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa. (ibid. p 36)
1994	Craig, Wm. Lane	The ministerial use of reason occurs when reason submits to and serves the gospel. Only the ministerial use of reason can be allowed... Reason is a tool to help us better understand and defend our faith. (ibid. p 36)
1994	Craig, Wm. Lane	...as long as reason is a minister of the Christian faith, Christians should employ it. (ibid. p 37)
?	Dawkins, Richard	I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
?	Descartes, Rene	Everything is self-evident.
?	Descartes, Rene	I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error.
1637	Descartes, Rene	Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has. (Discourse on Method)
?	Dolhenty, Jonathan	Error is the result of the influence of the will on the intellect. (The Problem of Knowledge)
1880	Dostoyevsky	if God does not exist, then everything is permissible. (The Brothers Karamazov)
1969	Edge, Graeme	I think, I think I am, therefore I am, I think. (Moody Blues, In the Beginning)
?	Einstein, Albert ?	Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
?	Einstein, Albert	No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
1950?	Einstein, Albert	At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.
c.100	Epictetus	What you would avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others.
?	Epicurus	Something obviously exists now. And something never sprang from nothing.
	Feibleman, James	A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
?	Feynman, Richard	God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.
1974	Feynman, Richard	The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. (Caltech commencement address)
?	Ford, Henry	Miracles are fine, but you can't depend on them.
2009	Fowler, Lonnie Ray	You can lead a horse to water--but you can't make him drink. You can lead a man to knowledge--but you can't make him think.
1759	Franklin, Benjamin	Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
?	Frost, Robert	Education is the ability to listen to anything without losing your temper or self confidence. (Collected Works V. 2)
1980?	Geisler, Norman	God determines the fact of freedom, but not the acts of freedom.
1776	Gibbon, Edward	The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch 2) But Gibbon may have plagiarized it from Seneca the younger, c.4BC - AD65: Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. or Lucretius, 94 - 49 BC: All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.
?	Gide, Andre	It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.
?	Gide, Andre	A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
?	Gide, Andre	Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
?	Gide, Andre	Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.
?	Gide, Andre	One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
1897	Gide, Andre	What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable. (Fruits of the Earth)
?	Gide, Andre	Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change.
1927	Haldane, John	If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. (Possible Worlds)
2009	Ham, Michael	When we teach our children what to think rather than how to think...we have made them stupid and we have made them victims of their own irrationality.
1979	Hitchcock, Brian	If a man is cloned, can he be born again?
1986	Hitchcock, Brian	No man is totally useless. You can always use him as a bad example.
1998	Hitchcock, Brian	Theology is an exact "science". It's only as exact as its interpreter.
1998	Hitchcock, Brian	No more words please. Show me Jesus that I might know the Father. (Jn 17:3)
1998	Hitchcock, Brian	You are what you worship. Catholicism: God in a box. Protestantism: God in a book. Orthodoxy: God may be in the box or the book.
1998	Hitchcock, Brian	If Christianity is logically self sustaining, it is a logically "closed" system, and thus violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
1998	Hitchcock, Brian	The Apostles' doctrine was their orthopraxis, and they turned the world upside down. Is it possible for the modern orthodox church to claim the same?
1998	Hitchcock, Brian & Smith, Mark	Christian apologetics: unreasonable answers to questions reasonable people never think of asking.
1998	Hitchcock, Brian	Evidentialists, presuppositionalists - it all sounds like hearsay to me.
1998	Hitchcock, Brian	The shortest distance between faith and reason is 18 inches: the distance between your heart and your head.
1998	Hitchcock, Brian	How much doctrinal error will damn a soul to hell?
	Holmes, Oliver Wendell	Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
	Holmes, Sherlock	After all alternatives but one have been eliminated as impossible, that which remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
	Hussein, Saddam	The law is anything I write on a piece of paper. (Dr. Khidhir Hamza's book, Saddam's Bomb Maker)
	Ingersol, Robert	Hands that work are better than lips that pray.
	Jefferson, Thomas	Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
2000?	Jolie, Angelina	I had everything you're supposed to have to be happy, and I wasn't happy. [So why do we never hear that from Heff?]
90?	Josephus, Flavius	Everyone ought to worship God according to his own inclinations, and not to be constrained by force. (Life)
1950?	Khruschev, Nikita	When Stalin says dance, the wise man dances. (Example: argumentum ad bacculum)
c.350BC	Lao Tse	The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced.
1670	Leibniz, Gottfried	There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. (Introduction to Philosophical Investigations)
1675	Leibniz, Gottfried	Whatever is incompatible with something necessary is impossible.
1967	Lewis, C. S.	We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread. (Christian Reflections p111)
?	Lewis, Sinclair	When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.
	Locke, John	It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth.
60bce?	Lucretius	Such evil deeds could religion prompt. (De Rerum Natura)
1530?	Luther, Martin	When the fathers depart from scripture, we depart from the fathers.
1990?	Manion, Russell	Either historic Christianity is true, or nihilism is true.
1997	Manion, Russell	Evidence is putty in the hands of a world view.
1998	Manion, Russell	God's revelation is the necessary and sufficient precondition for all intelligibility.
1998	Manion, Russell	Probability presupposes certainty.
1998	Manion, Russell	A chance universe is infinitely improbable.
1998	Manion, Russell	All necessary preconditions to reason exist.
	Manion, Russell	All hypothetical world-views are invalidated by virtue of the fact that they are hypothetical.
1965?	Martin, Walter	Whatever chance creates, it immediately annihilates. (source: Gretchen Passantino)
?	Mather, Cotton	Ignorance is the author, not of devotion, but of heresy.
1998	McCready, John	Trying to organize freethinkers is like trying to herd cats.
1924	Mencken, H. L.	One horselaugh is worth a thousand syllogisms. (The Human Mind, Prejudices: 4th)
1927	Mencken, H. L.	There is no record in human history of a happy philosopher; they exist only in romantic legend. Many of them have committed suicide; many others have turned their children out of doors and beaten their wives. (The Philosopher: The Human Mind, Prejudices:)
	Mencken, H. L.	A metaphysician is one who, when you remark that twice two makes four, demands to know what you mean by twice, what by two, what by makes, and what by four. (The Metaphysician: A Mencken Chrestomathy)
	Mencken, H. L.	Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
	Mencken, H. L.	To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
	Mencken, H. L.	The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
	Mencken, H. L.	Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
	Mencken, H. L.	Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
	Mencken, H. L.	Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
	Mencken, H. L.	Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
	Mencken, H. L.	All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
	Mencken, H. L.	For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
1949	Mencken, H. L.	Creator - A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. (A Mencken Chrestomathy, ch. 30) (often attributed to Voltaire)
1994	Moynihan, Daniel Patrick	You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts. (to electoral opponent on WNBC in New York)
632	Muhammad	Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.
1882	Nietzsche, Friedrich	God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him. (The Gay Science)
1882	Nietzsche, Friedrich	Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. (The Gay Science)
1887	Nietzsche, Friedrich	There are no facts, only interpretations. (Notebooks)
1888	Nietzsche, Friedrich	That which does not kill us makes us stronger. (Ecce Homo)
1888	Nietzsche, Friedrich	Faith: not wanting to know what is true. (The Antichrist)
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	There cannot be a God, because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	The lie is a condition of life.
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	Fear is the mother of morality.
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	Since there is no God to will what is good, we must will our own good. And since there is no eternal value, we must will the eternal recurrence of the same state of affairs.
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
	Nietzsche, Friedrich	All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
1957	Parkinson, C. Northcote	PARKINSON'S LAW: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
1990?	Passantino, Bob	I'm skeptical of skepticism.
1990?	Passantino, Bob	GOLDEN RULE OF APOLOGETICS: Don't require anything of the person you're talking to that you don't want him to require of you.
1990?	Passantino, Bob	Whatever you do to one side of the equation, you have to do to the other.
1990?	Passantino, Bob	You either philosophize or fossilize.
1995	Passantino, Bob	UNDENIABILITY PRINCIPLE: You can't deny the value of logic without asserting it.
1997	Passantino, Bob	Do you have a reason for believing in reason, or is it just blind faith?
1998	Passantino, Bob	I can give you the truth, but I can't give you understanding.
1998	Passantino, Bob	If you think you can, you might. If you think you can't, you won't.
1998	Passantino, Bob	Logical possibilities don't necessarily equal ontological possibilities.
1998	Passantino, Bob	Atheist to Christian: "You believe in God without a validating reason." Christian to Atheist: "You believe in reason without a validating God ."
1989	Passantino, Gretchen	Arguments are not relationships.
1995	Passantino, Gretchen	Historical context is the best interpreter of any given text.
c.60BC	Piso, Lucius Calpurnius	Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
c.370BC	Plato	None of the gods love wisdom or desire to become wise, for they are wise already - nor if someone else is wise, do they love wisdom. Neither do the ignorant love wisdom or desire to become wise; for this is the grievous thing about ignorance, that those who are neither good nor beautiful nor sensible think they are good enough, and do not desire that which they do not think they are lacking. (Symposium 203E-204A)
c.300	Porphyry	The gods have proclaimed Christ to have been most pious, but the Christians are a confused and vicious sect. (Adversus Christianos)
2005	Price, Robert M.	To recreate an America that shuns the mention of Christianity as hate speech is not to honor diversity but rather to deny it and to "terraform" the society in the image of one particular minority group: atheists and secularists. (Secularism and Seleucidism)
2005	Price, Robert M.	To require the Pledge of Allegiance with "under God" attached is saying, "C'mon kids, it's time to pledge our loyalty to Church and State." (Exorcizing the Pledge)
2007	Price, Robert M.	Praise means nothing unless it comes from a source that would be just as ready to dole out condemnation if you deserved it. (Twilight of American Idol)
	Prophet, Nathan	What good is truth if it causes unhappiness?
	Prophet, Nathan	Does it matter that you are ignorant if you are happy?
	Prophet, Nathan	Induction can never lead to absolute truth.
1946	Queen, Ellery	I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or heredity faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, and which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.
1902	Russell, Bertrand	That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. (A Freeman's Worship)
1927	Russell, Bertrand	Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue: ‘The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance.’ You would say: ‘Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment;’ and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say: ‘Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice, and so far as that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a moral argument against deity and not in favor of one. (Why I am Not a Christian)
1928	Russell, Bertrand	What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. (Skeptical Essays)
	Russell, Bertrand	The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
	Russell, Bertrand	A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
	Russell, Bertrand ?	Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless.
1980?	Sagan, Carl	Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Cook's response: If you haven't found evidence for or against the existence of something, then that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But if you look in a place where evidence would be if there were any, and don't find it, that's evidence of absence.
	Seneca	Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
1520?	Shipton, Mother	When the Cow doth ride the Bull, then, Priest, beware thy Skull.
1970?	Smith, Chuck	I would rather have the right spirit and the wrong facts than vice versa.
1975?	Smith, Chuck	Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be broken.
1840?	Smith, Joseph	As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.
1842	Smith, Joseph	We believe the Bible to be the word of God in so far as it is translated correctly. (8th Article of Faith)
1842	Smith, Joseph	Every man has a natural, and in our country a constitutional, right to be a false prophet as well as a true prophet. (Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith)
1998	Smith, Mark	If it's too much bother, people won't bother.
1830	Stendhal	The tyrant's most useful idea is that of God. (Le Rouge et le Noir)
	Stendhal	All religions are founded on the fear of the of the many and the cleverness of the few.
190?	Tertullian	And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And He was buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible. (On The Flesh Of Christ: V. written during his Montanist period)
	Twain, Mark	Supposing is good, but finding out is better.
	Twain, Mark	Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
	Twain, Mark	Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
	Twain, Mark	If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
1765	Voltaire	Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. (Questions sur le miracles)
1768	Voltaire	If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. (Epistle to the author of the book, The Three Impostors)
	Voltaire?	Anything too stupid to be said is sung. (See Beaumarchais)
	Voltaire?	God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. (See H L Menchen, 1949)
	Voltaire?	If a watch proves the existence of a watchmaker, but the universe does not prove the existence of a great Architect, then I consent to be called a fool.
1999	Weinberg, Steven	With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. (N. Y. Times)
?	?	Life is like dancing with a gorilla. You're not done till the gorilla's done.
?	?	A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.