quotes = new Array(159); speakers = new Array(159); sources = new Array(159); quotes[0] = "Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them."; speakers[0] = "Laurence J. Peter"; quotes[1] = "Don't take life so serious, son. It ain't nohow permanent."; speakers[1] = "Walt Kelly"; quotes[2] = "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."; speakers[2] = "Carl Sagan"; quotes[3] = "The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along."; speakers[3] = "Douglas Adams"; quotes[4] = "I'd rather be lost than afraid to take a ride."; speakers[4] = "Blues Traveler"; quotes[5] = "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."; speakers[5] = "Douglas Adams"; quotes[6] = "They say it all started out with a big bang. But what I wonder is, was it really a big bang or did it just seem big because there wasn't anything else to drown it out at the time?"; speakers[6] = "Karl Pilkington"; quotes[7] = "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."; speakers[7] = "Oscar Wilde"; quotes[8] = "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."; speakers[8] = "George Bernard Shaw"; quotes[9] = "You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."; speakers[9] = "Malcolm X"; quotes[10] = "An ingenious thought lives forever."; speakers[10] = "Edvard Munch"; quotes[11] = "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."; speakers[11] = "Sherlock Holmes"; quotes[12] = "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."; speakers[12] = "Isaac Asimov"; quotes[13] = "Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."; speakers[13] = "Jimi Hendrix"; quotes[14] = "A witty saying proves nothing."; speakers[14] = "Voltaire"; quotes[15] = "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying."; speakers[15] = "Woody Allen"; quotes[16] = "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."; speakers[16] = "Arthur C. Clarke"; quotes[17] = "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."; speakers[17] = "Ford Prefect"; quotes[18] = "In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."; speakers[18] = "Douglas Adams"; quotes[19] = "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."; speakers[19] = "Mark Twain"; quotes[20] = "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."; speakers[20] = "Albert Einstein"; quotes[21] = "Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it."; speakers[21] = "Dave Barry"; quotes[22] = "A lie told often enough becomes the truth. "; speakers[22] = "Vladimir Lenin"; quotes[23] = "Part of the fun of being alive is knowing that you're annoying the hell out of someone else."; speakers[23] = "Matt Groening"; quotes[24] = "About the only people who don't quarrel over religion are the people who don't have any."; speakers[24] = "Bob Edwards"; quotes[25] = "Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad name."; speakers[25] = "Henry Kissenger"; quotes[26] = "If you want to make someone hate you, explain to them, logically and politely, why they are wrong. "; speakers[26] = "Phil Simborg"; quotes[27] = "Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue."; speakers[27] = "Sam Harris"; quotes[28] = "If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"; speakers[28] = "Will Rogers"; quotes[29] = "A little revolution now and then is a good thing; the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."; speakers[29] = "Thomas Jefferson"; quotes[30] = "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."; speakers[30] = "George Bernard Shaw"; quotes[31] = "Faith means not wanting to know what is true."; speakers[31] = "Friedrich Nietzsche"; quotes[32] = "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."; speakers[32] = "Susan B. Anthony"; quotes[33] = "What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. "; speakers[33] = "Christopher Hitchens"; quotes[34] = "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."; speakers[34] = "Richard Dawkins"; quotes[35] = "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"; speakers[35] = "Douglas Adams"; quotes[36] = "Men often swallow falsities for truths, dubiosities for certainties, possibilities for feasibilities."; speakers[36] = "Sir T. Browne"; quotes[37] = "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."; speakers[37] = "Frank Lloyd Wright"; quotes[38] = "We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."; speakers[38] = "Gene Roddenberry"; quotes[39] = "To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."; speakers[39] = "Isaac Asimov"; quotes[40] = "Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination."; speakers[40] = "Edward Abbey"; quotes[41] = "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."; speakers[41] = "Delos B. McKown"; quotes[42] = "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."; speakers[42] = "Stephen Roberts"; quotes[43] = "Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."; speakers[43] = "Don Hirschberg"; quotes[44] = "To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I wouldn't be wrong to ask."; speakers[44] = "Geoff Mather"; quotes[45] = "A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it."; speakers[45] = "David Stevens"; quotes[46] = "People will then often say, 'But surely it's better to remain an Agnostic just in case?' This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I've been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)"; speakers[46] = "Douglas Adams"; quotes[47] = "Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived."; speakers[47] = "Isaac Asimov"; quotes[48] = "When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."; speakers[48] = "Robert Pirsig"; quotes[49] = "Religion is like a virus that affects the behaviour of its host in such a way as to propagate itself further."; speakers[49] = "Jack Pritchard"; quotes[50] = "Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it."; speakers[50] = "John Adams"; quotes[51] = "I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain."; speakers[51] = "Gene Roddenberry"; quotes[52] = "It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."; speakers[52] = "Mark Twain"; quotes[53] = "Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."; speakers[53] = "Napoleon Bonaparte"; quotes[54] = "I give money for church organs in the hope the organ music will distract the congregation's attention from the rest of the service."; speakers[54] = "Andrew Carnegie"; quotes[55] = "Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."; speakers[55] = "Thomas Jefferson"; quotes[56] = "Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist."; speakers[56] = "Indiana Jones"; quotes[57] = "In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness."; speakers[57] = "Carl Sagan"; quotes[58] = "It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese."; speakers[58] = "Carl Sagan"; quotes[59] = "In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion."; speakers[59] = "Carl Sagan"; quotes[60] = "We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity."; speakers[60] = "Marie Curie"; quotes[61] = "Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."; speakers[61] = "H. L. Mencken"; quotes[62] = "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."; speakers[62] = "H. L. Mencken"; quotes[63] = "It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."; speakers[63] = "H. L. Mencken"; quotes[64] = "Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true."; speakers[64] = "H. L. Mencken"; quotes[65] = "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."; speakers[65] = "Sir Winston Churchill"; quotes[66] = "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."; speakers[66] = "John F. Kennedy"; quotes[67] = "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."; speakers[67] = "Friedrich Nietzsche"; quotes[68] = "If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."; speakers[68] = "Isaac Asimov"; quotes[69] = "Against logic there is no armor like ignorance."; speakers[69] = "Laurence J. Peter"; quotes[70] = "It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument."; speakers[70] = "William G. McAdoo"; quotes[71] = "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."; speakers[71] = "Albert Einstein"; quotes[72] = "The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason."; speakers[72] = "Benjamin Franklin"; quotes[73] = "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."; speakers[73] = "Abraham Lincoln"; quotes[74] = "Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that many people don't know it."; speakers[74] = "Richard Dawkins"; quotes[75] = "I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."; speakers[75] = "Douglas Adams"; quotes[76] = "My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?"; speakers[76] = "Charles M. Schulz"; quotes[77] = "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."; speakers[77] = "Galileo Galilei"; quotes[78] = "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."; speakers[78] = "Philip K. Dick"; quotes[79] = "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."; speakers[79] = "Charles Darwin"; quotes[80] = "Some believers accuse skeptics of having nothing left but a dull, cold scientific world. I am left with only art, music, literature, theater, the magnificence of nature, mathematics, the human spirit, sex, the cosmos, friendship, history, science, imagination, dreams, oceans, mountains, love and the wonder of birth. That'll do me."; speakers[80] = "Lynne Kelly"; quotes[81] = "Luck is probability taken personally."; speakers[81] = "Chip Denman"; quotes[82] = "Just because New York City exists doesn't mean Spider-Man is real."; speakers[82] = "Robert M. Price"; quotes[83] = "The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."; speakers[83] = "Thomas Paine"; quotes[84] = "Through no fault of our own, and by dint of no cosmic plan or conscious purpose, we have be come, by the grace of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We have not asked for that role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are."; speakers[84] = "Stephen Jay Gould"; quotes[85] = "...a world without monsters, ghosts, demons, and gods unfetters the mind to soar to new heights, to think unthinkable thoughts, to imagine the unimaginable, to contemplate infinity and eternity knowing that no one is looking back. The universe takes on a whole new meaning when you know that your place in it was not foreordained, that it was not designed for us - indeed, that it was not designed at all. If we are nothing more than star stuff and biomass, how special life becomes. If the tape were played again and again without the appearance of our species, how extraordinary becomes our existence, and, correspondingly, how cherished. To share in the sublimity of knowledge generated by other human minds, and perhaps even to make a tiny contribution toward that body of knowledge that will be passed down through the ages - part of the cumulative wisdom of a single species on a tiny planet orbiting an ordinary star on the remote edge of a not-so-unusual galaxy, itself a member of a cluster of galaxies billions of light years from nowhere, is sublime beyond words."; speakers[85] = "Michael Shermer"; quotes[86] = "There's no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data."; speakers[86] = "George D. Lundberg"; quotes[87] = "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."; speakers[87] = "Mark Twain"; quotes[88] = "I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law."; speakers[88] = "Aristotle"; quotes[89] = "One characteristic of cults is that they strongly believe they alone are right in their beliefs and everyone else is wrong. Thus they reject the central truths of the Bible that Christians have held in common for almost 2,000 years and substitute their own beliefs for the clear teaching of Scripture."; speakers[89] = "Billy Graham"; quotes[90] = "All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist."; speakers[90] = "H. P. Lovecraft"; quotes[91] = "It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."; speakers[91] = "Richard Feynman"; quotes[92] = "It is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptable nonsense is so freely propagated."; speakers[92] = "Barney Frank"; quotes[93] = "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."; speakers[93] = "Bertrand Russell"; quotes[94] = "To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."; speakers[94] = "Thomas Jefferson"; quotes[95] = "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."; speakers[95] = "Ronald Reagan"; quotes[96] = "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."; speakers[96] = "Richard Dawkins"; quotes[97] = "One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all. It's this: 'Don't do unto anybody else what you wouldn't like to be done to you.' It seems to me that that's all there is to it."; speakers[97] = "Arthur C. Clarke"; quotes[98] = "I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, nor to scorn human actions, but to understand them."; speakers[98] = "Baruch Spinoza"; quotes[99] = "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."; speakers[99] = "Albert Einstein"; quotes[100] = "There has to be an uncaused starting point to the universe, or it's an exercise in infinite regression (which it may be; it's as good a proposition as saying it had a beginning). But let's just assume that there was something that popped into existence without a causal agent behind it. Now the question is, what was that first something? I think it's perfectly fine to suggest it was a singularity, that first tiny pinpoint of incipient mass and energy. We gain nothing from saying the first cause was a 'god', which is an undefined and inconsistent being of significant complexity with human-like qualities of intelligence, who then by mechanism unknown initiates the singularity. It's an unnecessary complication, especially when one of your reasons for bringing it into the equation is that you can't comprehend how matter and energy came into being, so you're going to invoke magic and push the problem back onto a superman."; speakers[100] = "P.Z. Myers"; quotes[101] = "I don't think we're here for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose,' but I'm anticipating a good lunch."; speakers[101] = "Dr. James Watson" quotes[102] = "It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."; speakers[102] = "Thomas Paine"; quotes[103] = "Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new."; speakers[103] = "Galileo"; quotes[104] = "Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follow[s] from the advance of science."; speakers[104] = "Charles Darwin"; quotes[105] = "For every Galileo there are a thousand crackpots who also question received wisdom - but are wrong."; speakers[105] = "Dr. Jerry A. Coyne"; quotes[106] = "In the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is only too palpable."; speakers[106] = "Sigmund Freud"; quotes[107] = "The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad."; speakers[107] = "Nietzsche"; quotes[108] = "We must respect the other man's religion, but only to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart."; speakers[108] = "H.L. Mencken"; quotes[109] = "Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise there would be no religious people."; speakers[109] = "Dr. Gregory House"; quotes[110] = "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."; speakers[110] = "George Bernard Shaw"; quotes[111] = "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. "; speakers[111] = "George Bernard Shaw"; quotes[112] = "If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."; speakers[112] = "George Bernard Shaw"; quotes[113] = "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."; speakers[113] = "Carl Sagan"; quotes[114] = "Anyone in the 21st century who rants about the earth being 6000 years old and unthinkingly accepts the scientific authority of an ancient book cobbled together by tribes of sheepherders really needs to be shuffled off to a rubber room."; speakers[114] = "P.Z. Myers"; quotes[115] = "Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that."; speakers[115] = "George Carlin"; quotes[116] = "In my view, not only is science corrosive to religion, religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial, supernatural non-explanations, and blinds them to wonderful, real explanations that we have within our grasp. It teaches them to accept authority, revelation, and faith instead of always insisting on evidence."; speakers[116] = "Richard Dawkins"; sources[116] = "\"Richard Dawkins on militant atheism\", TED Talk, Feb. 2002"; quotes[117] = "Enjoy the fantasy, the fun, the stories, but make sure there's a clear, sharp line drawn on the floor so that you can step back, behind that mark, and re-embrace reality. To do otherwise is to embrace madness."; speakers[117] = "James Randi"; quotes[118] = "The veracity of a proposition is independent of the number of people who believe it."; speakers[118] = "Michael Shermer"; quotes[119] = "The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth"; speakers[119] = "H.L. Mencken"; quotes[120] = "If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them."; speakers[120] = "Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron d'Holbach"; quotes[121] = "Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism."; speakers[121] = "Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron d'Holbach"; quotes[122] = "...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."; speakers[122] = "Hermann Göring"; sources[122] = "Gustave Gilbert's Nuremburg Diary (ISBN 0-306-80661-4)"; quotes[123] = "Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science."; speakers[123] = "Edwin Hubble"; sources[123] = "The Exploration of Space, Harper's Magazine 158: 732"; quotes[124] = "Science is the one human activity that is totally progressive"; speakers[124] = "Edwin Hubble"; sources[124] = "The Realm of the Nebulae"; quotes[125] = "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."; speakers[125] = "Arthur C. Clarke"; sources[125] = "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination, in Profiles of the Future (1962)"; quotes[126] = "Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned."; speakers[126] = "Mark Twain"; sources[126] = "Mark Twain's Notebook"; quotes[127] = "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them..."; speakers[127] = "Thomas Jefferson"; sources[127] = "Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp (30 July 1816)"; quotes[128] = "Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer."; speakers[128] = "old atheist proverb"; quotes[129] = "Yes, it was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say, but no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if they open it and read it, they don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me. You can complain about it. You can write to the publisher. You can write to the papers. You can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read. And that's all I have to say on that subject."; speakers[129] = "Philip Pullman"; sources[129] = "Lecture at Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, March 28 2010"; quotes[130] = "Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal."; speakers[130] = "Robert A. Heinlein"; sources[130] = "Assignment in Eternity"; quotes[131] = "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity."; speakers[131] = "Robert A. Heinlein"; sources[131] = "Logic of Empire"; quotes[132] = "I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!"; speakers[132] = "Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord"; sources[132] = "Truppenführung"; quotes[133] = "I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."; speakers[133] = "Robert A. Heinlein"; sources[133] = "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"; quotes[134] = "I don't think we're here for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose,' but I'm anticipating a good lunch."; speakers[134] = "James D. Watson"; quotes[135] = "If we don't play God, who will?"; speakers[135] = "James D. Watson"; sources[135] = "The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities"; quotes[136] = "It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."; speakers[136] = "Thomas Paine"; sources[136] = "Letter Addressed to the Addressers on the Late Proclamation"; quotes[137] = "Those truths which we know are very few in comparison with those which we do not know....Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new."; speakers[137] = "Galileo"; sources[137] = "Drake Discoveries 187, 256"; quotes[138] = "Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follow[s] from the advance of science."; speakers[138] = "Charles Darwin"; sources[138] = "Feur, 2-3"; quotes[139] = "For every Galileo there are a thousand crackpots who also question received wisdom - but are wrong."; speakers[139] = "Dr. Jerry A. Coyne"; sources[139] = "An attack on evolution, from our side, Why Evolution is True blog"; quotes[140] = "\'I don't know\' does not mean \'I DO know, and it was a spaceship\'"; speakers[140] = "Brian Dunning"; sources[140] = "Skeptoid #208"; quotes[141] = "Technology isn't intrinsically good or evil. It's how it's used. Like the Death Ray."; speakers[141] = "Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth"; sources[141] = "Futurama season 6, episode 8"; quotes[142] = "We'd all like to vote for the best man, but he's never a candidate."; speakers[142] = "Kin Hubbard"; sources[142] = "The Best of Kin Hubbard"; quotes[143] = "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."; speakers[143] = "Douglas Adams"; sources[143] = "Mostly Harmless"; quotes[144] = "I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they assert that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men."; speakers[144] = "Robert G. Ingersoll"; sources[144] = "The Ghosts"; quotes[145] = "I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have no right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the altars of ghosts. Believe what you may; preach what you desire; have all the forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your liberty in your own way but extend to all others the same right."; speakers[145] = "Robert G. Ingersoll"; sources[145] = "The Ghosts"; quotes[146] = "Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. "; speakers[146] = "Douglas Adams"; sources[146] = "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency"; quotes[147] = "The major problem – one of the major problems, for there are several – one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."; speakers[147] = "Douglas Adams"; sources[147] = "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"; quotes[148] = "If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather then by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless and will therefore result to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education."; speakers[148] = "Bertrand Russell"; sources[148] = "Human Society in Ethics & Politics"; quotes[149] = "We may define 'faith' as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of 'faith'. We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence."; speakers[149] = "Bertrand Russell"; sources[149] = "Human Society in Ethics & Politics"; quotes[150] = "What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem."; speakers[150] = "Bertrand Russell"; sources[150] = "The Value of Free Thought"; quotes[151] = "Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."; speakers[151] = "Louis Hector Berlioz"; sources[151] = "Letter written in November 1856, published in Pierre Citron"; quotes[152] = "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions. Their lives a mimicry. Their passions a quotation. "; speakers[152] = "Oscar Wilde"; sources[152] = "De Profundis"; quotes[153] = "Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."; speakers[153] = "Carl Sagan"; sources[153] = "Billions and Billions"; quotes[154] = "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."; speakers[154] = "George Bernard Shaw"; sources[154] = "Man and Superman"; quotes[155] = "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."; speakers[155] = "Mark Twain"; sources[155] = "Mark Twain's Notebook"; quotes[156] = "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."; speakers[156] = "Voltaire"; sources[156] = "Letter to Frederick II of Prussia"; quotes[157] = "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'."; speakers[157] = "Isaac Asimov"; sources[157] = "Newsweek Jan 21, 1980"; quotes[158] = "Teach a man to reason, and he'll think for a lifetime."; speakers[158] = "Phil Plait"; sources[158] = "Don't Be A Dick speech, TAM8"; function printSingle(){ index = Math.floor(Math.random() * quotes.length); //display the quotation document.write("\n"); document.write("\""+quotes[index] + "\""); document.write("

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