Quotes by American Authors - Page 97

[When asked about his thoughts on gods]I think it's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything. Man lived on the planet — [placing his fingers an inch apart], this is 5000 years of semi-recorded history. And God and the Bible, that came in somewhere around the middle, maybe 2000. This is the last 2000, this is what we're about to celebrate [indicating about an 1/8th of an inch with his fingers]. Now, humans, in some shape or form, have been on the earth for three million years [pointing across the room to indicate the distance]. So, all this time, from there [gesturing toward the other side of the room], to here [indicating the 1/8th of an inch], there was no God, there was no story, there was no myth and people lived on this planet and they wandered and they gathered and they did all these things. The planet was never threatened. How did they survive for all this time without this belief in God? I'd like to ask this to someone who knows about Christianity and maybe you do. That just seems funny to me.
Eddie Vedder
The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.
Ashley Montagu
Can we believe that the real God, if there is one, ever ordered a man to be killed simply for making hair oil, or ointment? We are told in the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, that the Lord commanded Moses to take myrrh, cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil, and make a holy ointment for the purpose of anointing the tabernacle, tables, candlesticks and other utensils, as well as Aaron and his sons; saying, at the same time, that whosoever compounded any like it, or whoever put any of it on a stranger, should be put to death. In the same chapter, the Lord furnishes Moses with a recipe for making a perfume, saying, that whoever should make any which smelled like it, should be cut off from his people. This, to me, sounds so unreasonable that I cannot believe it. Why should an infinite God care whether mankind made ointments and perfumes like his or not? Why should the Creator of all things threaten to kill a priest who approached his altar without having washed his hands and feet? These commandments and these penalties would disgrace the vainest tyrant that ever sat, by chance, upon a throne.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Why is it you trust my daughter so much when others almost universally revile her?""I consider their disdain for her to be a recommendation," he said."She is a heretic.""She refused to join any of the devotaries because she did not believe in their teachings. Rather than compromise for the sake of appearances, she has been honest and has refused to make professions she does not believe. I find that a sign of honor.
Brandon Sanderson
Leonardo believed his research had thepotential to convert millions to a more spiritual life. Last year he categorically proved the existence ofan energy force that unites us all. He actually demonstrated that we are all physically connected… thatthe molecules in your body are intertwined with the molecules in mine… that there is a single forcemoving within all of us.” Langdon felt disconcerted. And the power of God shall unite us all. “Mr. Vetra actually found a wayto demonstrate that particles are connected?”“Conclusive evidence. A recent Scientific American article hailed New Physics as a surer path to Godthan religion itself.
Dan Brown
The only valid faith today is disbelief.
J.S.B. Morse
You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake.
Orson Scott Card
How will I make a people who do not understand the power of belief believe?
Brom
What if we saw differences in cultures, in moral choices, and in belief as reasons to engage people instead of excuses to disengage and quickly exit?
Holly Sprink
Jasmine had endured enough parochial schooling before middle school to have a residual attachment to the beautiful parts of believing, the certainty of knowing one is loved by something beyond comprehension, but also a niggling fear of those who believed too much in anything they could not touch. Believers were the sort to wave pictures of dead fetuses at her when she went to her gynecologist for a checkup.
Thomm Quackenbush
I pray that the world never runs out of dragons. I say that in all sincerity, though I have played a part in the death of one great wyrm. For the dragon is the quintessential enemy, the greatest foe, the unconquerable epitome of devastation. The dragon, above all other creatures, even the demons and the devils, evokes images of dark grandeur, of the greatest beast curled asleep on the greatest treasure hoard. They are the ultimate test of the hero and the ultimate fright of the child. They are older than the elves and more akin to the earth than the dwarves. The great dragons are the preternatural beast, the basic element of the beast, that darkest part of our imagination.The wizards cannot tell you of their origin, though they believe that a great wizard, a god of wizards, must have played some role in the first spawning of the beast. The elves, with their long fables explaining the creation of every aspect of the world, have many ancient tales concerning the origin of the dragons, but they admit, privately, that they really have no idea of how the dragons came to be.My own belief is more simple, and yet, more complicated by far. I believe that dragons appeared in the world immediately after the spawning of the first reasoning race. I do not credit any god of wizards with their creation, but rather, the most basic imagination wrought of unseen fears, of those first reasoning mortals.We make the dragons as we make the gods, because we need them, because, somewhere deep in our hearts, we recognize that a world without them is a world not worth living in.There are so many people in the land who want an answer, a definitive answer, for everything in life, and even for everything after life. They study and they test, and because those few find the answers for some simple questions, they assume that there are answers to be had for every question. What was the world like before there were people? Was there nothing but darkness before the sun and the stars? Was there anything at all? What were we, each of us, before we were born? And what, most importantly of all, shall we be after we die?Out of compassion, I hope that those questioners never find that which they seek.One self-proclaimed prophet came through Ten-Towns denying the possibility of an afterlife, claiming that those people who had died and were raised by priests, had, in fact, never died, and that their claims of experiences beyond the grave were an elaborate trick played on them by their own hearts, a ruse to ease the path to nothingness. For that is all there was, he said, an emptiness, a nothingness.Never in my life have I ever heard one begging so desperately for someone to prove him wrong.This is kind of what I believe right now… although, I do not want to be proved wrong…For what are we left with if there remains no mystery? What hope might we find if we know all of the answers?What is it within us, then, that so desperately wants to deny magic and to unravel mystery? Fear, I presume, based on the many uncertainties of life and the greatest uncertainty of death. Put those fears aside, I say, and live free of them, for if we just step back and watch the truth of the world, we will find that there is indeed magic all about us, unexplainable by numbers and formulas. What is the passion evoked by the stirring speech of the commander before the desperate battle, if not magic? What is the peace that an infant might know in its mother’s arms, if not magic? What is love, if not magic?No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith.And that, I fear, for any reasoning, conscious being, would be the cruelest trick of all.-Drizzt Do’Urden
R.A. Salvatore
As a rule,I believe people shouldn't follow rules;rules should follow people.
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator.
Criss Jami
If you want to be a successful writer you have to put your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard and put words on the page. Even shitty words are better than no words. You can go back and fix them later.
Liliana Hart
We live in a thought-suggestive Universe. The sky’s the limit. Believe and you’ll receive.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Never keep your brain so full that people’s opinions take up every pew in your mind, and truth has to be “born again” before it is believed.
Shannon L. Alder
You see, it doesn't matter if they're wrong. From 9/11 to recent shootings here in the United States, there's nothing more dangerous than a true believer on his own crazy mission.
Brad Meltzer
I pity the man who praises God only when things go his way.
Criss Jami
When asking for advice, search not for what is on the surface, Dig deeper, questioning what does this person believe in?
J.R. Rim
Your true friends echo your own philosophies back at you.
J.R. Rim
What is it that makes us who we are and what we are? Is it only our blood, the color of our hair, our skin, and our eyes? Or is it believing in what we believe and living the way we live?
Aleksandra Layland
You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do...and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself.
Criss Jami
God is so much bigger than our ‘what ifs’ that he can turn them into ‘why nots
Gary Rohrmayer
I shall not repent of my faith.
Seth Adam Smith
Maybe the real miracle in any miracle is our ability to believe that despite our own depravity, in the eyes of God we are worthy of a miracle.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I won’t tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else’s notions thrust upon you.
Christopher Paolini
Blurryface is a fictional character and a reference to insecurities, which I think all people have.
Josh Dun
When I find that stubbornness continually overrides common sense regardless of the logic of my argument, it seems that the only effective solution is to tell them to go ahead and stick their finger in the socket. And what I find is that what my argument failed to solve, electricity does quite nicely.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Many of us are literally prone to believing the most blatantly nonsensical untruths. There are some opinions and some beliefs so incredibly moronic, you actually feel stupid for not believing them; and it's probably because in giving the benefit of the doubt you self-doubt, you convince yourself into lame passivity and blind acceptance, you tell yourself, 'Maybe I'm just missing something here.
Criss Jami
One shouldn't be labelled a cynic just because one refuses to believe in fairy tales.
Marty Rubin
Next time!" In what calendar are kept the records of those next times which never come?
Helen Hunt Jackson
We are a day away from making history, and a history towards the breaking of tommorrow.
Anthony Liccione
My native tense is future conditional, a low simmer of unspecified worry being the usual condition.
Michael Pollan
She knew what he had in mind.He'll propose in Scotland on my birthday.There was no doubt as to what her answer would be.
Jana Oliver
Because if they grow up holding on to such terrible feelings, it could lead to another war come time in the future when the fate of the country is in their hands.
Erin Gruwell
Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man's fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion.This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in the pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man.Professor Smith envisages as a redeeming force, training in objective observation of all that is available for immediate perception and in the interpretation of facts without preconceived ideas. In his view, only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.His historical picture closes with the end of the nineteenth century, and with good reason. By that time it seemed that the influence of these mythic, authoritatively anchored forces which can be denoted as religious, had been reduced to a tolerable level in spite of all the persisting inertia and hypocrisy.Even then, a new branch of mythic thought had already grown strong, one not religious in nature but no less perilous to mankind -- exaggerated nationalism. Half a century has shown that this new adversary is so strong that it places in question man's very survival. It is too early for the present-day historian to write about this problem, but it is to be hoped that one will survive who can undertake the task at a later date.
Albert Einstein
Pride is nothing more than false courage without long term solutions.
Shannon L. Alder
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.
Willard Van Orman Quine
Chase said, “It was a crazy idea.” An impossible idea.“Nothing is impossible, Chase, only improbable. And when you can see into the future and manipulate people into the right places, you can accomplish amazing things.”“I think I liked the idea better when it was in my head.
Adrienne Wilder
Every broken heart has one time or another asked, "What is important to me now?
Shannon L. Alder
It would take a civilization far more advanced than ours, unbelievably advanced, to begin to manipulate negative energy to create gateways to the past. But if you could obtain large quantities of negative energy—and that's a big “IF”—then you could create a time machine that apparently obeys Einstein's equation and perhaps the laws of quantum theory.
Michio Kaku
The past, has been erased; the present, forgiven; and the future, redeemed.
Anthony Liccione
Every time someone reaches out to you, even if it's to point out your sin and they seem to be judging you, it is a token of God's mercy. He sees the past, present, and future. He knows that you're headed for an eternity of pain and sorrow and He's begging you to turn to Him for salvation. Jesus is the only way to Heaven: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is your only hope. He is your Creator and He loves you more than you could ever love yourself. Please turn to Him. Please don't be deceived into thinking your way is better than His. God's way is perfect.
J.E.B. Spredemann
Worry does not keep it from raining tomorrow, but it does keep it from being sunny today.
Shannon L. Alder
Life is like a lit cigarette. The past is ashes, the present is burning, and the future is up in smoke. Fast as a breath; inhale exhale.
Anthony Liccione
All great beginnings start in the dark, when the moon greets you to a new day at midnight.
Shannon L. Alder
Director of Ensuring the Future
Dave Eggers
Learn from the past, log the lessons from the past, butleave the past!
Elizabeth George
Computers: he always fixed on computers when his mind wandered into the future--instruments he revered and hated. The computer world was a place where snotty kids knew everything and nothing.... The computer was part of a future cloudy, unpredictable and menacing.
Howard Fast
We were surrounded by thirty-foot-tall giants who were about to kill us. Then the sky opened up, and the gods descended.""Grandad," the kids said, "you are full of schist." "I'm not kidding!" he protested.
Rick Riordan
As a sculptor sculpts a statue, an educator educates our future generation. Beauty depends on the creator.
Debasish Mridha
The trouble with psychics is that they convince you that you get this future no matter what you do. It is as though you can cheat the universe out of your experiences, that you need only tweak something here or there to live happily ever after. It allows for spiritual sloth in the certainty of providence.
Thomm Quackenbush
The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings...Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe...no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent...For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.
President John F. Kennedy
I grew up in an era that was a golden age of the blockbuster, when something we might call a family film could have universal appeal. That's something I want to see again. In terms of the tone of the film, it looks at where we are as a people and has a universality about human experience.
Christopher J. Nolan
To be honest, I’ve always made films and I never really stopped, starting with little stop-motion experiments using my dad’s Super 8 camera. In my mind, it’s all one big continuum of filmmaking and I’ve never changed.
Christopher J. Nolan
Kodachrome... it gives us those nice, bright colors,gives us the greens of summers,makes ya think all the world's a sunny day,Oh yeah!I've got a Nikon camera, I'd love to take a photograph,so mama don't take...my Kodachrome away...
Paul Simon
Don't talk yourself into falling in love with someone. Either, you are in love or you are not. True love is not a choice. It is something you know in your heart when all guilt, doubt and fear are removed.
Shannon L. Alder
The future of the next generation relies on astronomers obtaining a full understanding ofthe rapidly changing human environmental conditions and the halting of biologically toxic corporategovernment policies. The overloading of the electromagnetic environment is one of these disastrouspolicies that must stop.
Steven Magee
Savers have to be punished so debtors can be saved.Why? Because if debtors are rescued, that makes it possible for more debts to be issued in the future.And why is that important? Because the banking system needs ever more loans in order to survive.
Chris Martenson
One of these days, will become a this day. And that day, will be the preeminent of days to come.
Anthony Liccione