Quotes, Quips, Excerpts and Miscellany

I'm a fan of quotes; when I find someone who has something worthwhile to say, and says it well, I like to keep a copy of it. I put them in a text file and use them in my sig line in Usenet posts. At the moment I have nearly 1,500.

As I mentioned in my first post, now and then I say something worthwhile and say it well; if I'm particularly impressed with myself, I'll add it to the file. This post is a compilation of those quotes. Some of them are excerpts from various discussions I've had; others are just ideas that I had and wrote down. So, in no particular order:

• I refuse to go out of my way to avoid offending people who go out of their way to be offended. I believe in obliging them.


• Squirrels are proof that God meant us to laugh.


• Looking at the brain and wondering where the consciousness is, is like looking at a computer peripheral and wondering where all that computing power is, with no awareness of the computer up the line.


• It is the task of a government to protect and serve its populace. But lacking any real understanding of people and human nature, it eventually becomes desperate, and sees enslavement of its populace as the only way to accomplish this task. This, of course, is insane, but welcome to planet Earth.


• I'm polyatheistic – I don't believe in lots of gods.


• Logic is limited. All it can do is describe the universe.


• Life isn't fair. But Life isn't unfair, either. Life is indifferent. Largely, you make your own fate. I won't lie to you – if you keep working, keep moving toward your goal, there is no guarantee you'll ever make it. No one promised you'd get a break. But the chances are you will. And if you quit, it is guaranteed that you won't make it. But if you keep plugging, keep moving, then someday, regardless of whether you get where you were aiming for, you will have gotten somewhere. You will have accomplished something. That's the other guarantee.


• Freedom and security are two sides of the same coin – it is a fallacy to believe you can spend one to get the other. Just as freedom without security isn't free, security without freedom isn't secure. There is nothing safe about slavery.


• You can lead a person to logic, but you can't make them think.


• As a child, the measure of your progress is how much you can do for yourself. As an adult, the measure of your progress is how much you can do for others.


• Nothing causes panic in Hollywood like someone else's success.


• This life has been recorded before a live studio audience.


• No slave is so surely bound as one who believes he is free.


• Corporate taxes are an illusion. Companies don't pay taxes, only people do.


• My concept of God is probably not the same as yours. But then, you could say the same thing about the person sitting next to you in church – their concept of God is probably not quite the same as yours. Nor should it be – God, and the relationship of God to the individual, is a very personal thing. As different as one person is from another, so will each person's experience of God be different. But really, in the end, for those who are sincere, we're all talking about the same thing.


• For most people, life is, to a greater or lesser degree, a chaotic confusion, while the thing people most desperately desire is certainty. Thus, people will follow anyone who can give at least a convincing appearance of certainty – anyone who appears to have made some sense out of things, regardless of whether they actually have or not.


• Since our knowledge doesn't encompass the entire universe, we have to start somewhere, and we start by making certain assumptions. All of our scientific "proofs" are ultimately based on assumptions we make about the universe around us, which may or may not be valid. Science becomes blind when it assumes that a high certainty is an absolute certainty.


• Spirituality without science has no mind. Science without spirituality has no heart.


• I always wildly exaggerate. Well, I sometimes exaggerate a bit.


• A fundamental human right is the right to define oneself – the right to say "I am this," or "I am that." Granting others the right to be who and what they choose to be is the foundation of respect. Violation of this right is the source of much of the trouble in the world. Rarely does a person decide on their own to be evil – they become that way because others tell them they are, and refuse to accept what they themselves have chosen to be. Finally, in despair, the person says, "OK, you say I'm evil? I'll show you evil."


• If we are truly children of God, our stresses, worries, fears and anxieties do not become us. There is an opportunity in every single circumstance we encounter in life – an opportunity to reach someone, an opportunity to learn something, an opportunity to be where God wants you to be; if you truly believe in Him and trust Him to guide your life, then you are where He needs you to be at that moment. If it's a bad situation, then let go of all the fear and anxiety, and take a look around and find out what opportunity there is. What's the worst that's going to happen? If you die, then you'll awaken to the trumpet of God and the voice of the Archangel. Trust the rest to God.

A note about the last item: I am not a Christian – this was taken from an email exchange with a good friend of mine who is. I'm not saying this as a repudiation of Christians or Christianity, but rather simply to be clear.