Don't Interfere

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

--Abraham Lincoln

The Right of the People

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

--Amendment IV, the U.S. Constitution

Loyalty

To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

--Woody Allen

Foreclosed

If a nation is unable to perceive reality correctly, and persists in operating on the basis of faith-based delusions, its ability to hold its own in the world is pretty much foreclosed.

--Morris Berman (professor of sociology at Catholic University)

Take Control

Can we take control over our own lives and stop evoking the sky-God whenever we refuse to understand or act for ourselves?

--Jaye Ramsey Sutter

Inventions

All religions of a spiritual nature are inventions of man. He has created an entire system of gods with nothing more than his carnal brain. Just because he has an ego and cannot accept it, he has had to externalize it into some great spiritual device which he calls "God."

--Anton Szandor LaVey

Every Single...

Every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don't accept him.

--Philip Pullman

This Offer Is Limited...

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.

--Steve Jobs

What Is Right?

The desire to be right and the desire to have been right are two desires, and the sooner we separate them the better off we are. The desire to be right is the thirst for truth. On all accounts, both practical and theoretical, there is nothing but good to be said for it. The desire to have been right, on the other hand, is the pride that goeth before a fall. It stands in the way of our seeing we were wrong, and thus blocks the progress of our knowledge.

--W. V. Quine and J. S. Ullian

A River...

Awakening is not a single event in time; it is a river endlessly flowing in this moment now.

--Arjuna Ardagh

First Steps

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

This Too

This too, this too.

--Buddhist mantra

Somebody Helped

No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.

--Althea Gibson

Surprise!

Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one.

--Vladimir Nabokov

Unconditional

I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other than real, unconditional love. You can find it in a simple act of kindness toward someone who needs help. There is no mistaking love. You feel it in your heart. It is the common fiber of life, the flame that heats our soul, energizes our spirit and supplies passion to our lives. It is our connection to God and to each other.

--Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Memory

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

--Jane Austen

If Death...

If death is the end of everything, then living is everything.

--Robert D. Richardson

Brief Crack of Light

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

--Vladimir Nabokov

As If

We should act as if the universe were listening to us and responding. We should act as if life were going to win.

--Philip Pullman

Only Once

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.

--Friedrich Nietzsche