Ambiguity

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.
--Pema Chödrön

Ceases

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion.
--Justice Robert Jackson

Community

At its best, the primary achievement and consoling power of religion stems from community--a group of people bound by some commonality or another. We don't need religion--we need each other.
--Tundra New England

Decency

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.
--Christopher Hitchens

Throw Out

The history and purpose of science has been to supplant itself, throw out old paradigms as they reach a crisis and are supplanted by new ones. This never happens in theology.
--Kayle Clark

Exhale

We don't die inhaling, we exhale, we leave it all behind.
--Sam Jaeger

Fix

It's very hard to see us fixing the climate until we fix our democracy.
--Dr. James E. Hansen

Test

The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.
--Robert M. Pirsig

Opinions

It's tempting to believe that computers will be neutral and objective, but algorithms are nothing more than opinions embedded in mathematics.
--Cathy O'Neil

Be

Be obscure clearly.
--E.B. White

Stay

I realized that you're in people's lives for a reason. They want you there. It's important to stay.
--V.

Hardest

It isn't easy, it doesn't count if it's easy, it's the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet.
--Tony Kushner

Grind

Though the mills of God grind slowly.
Yet they grind exceeding small.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Leave

no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don't know what
i've become.
--Warsan Shire

Children

So many children. You don't walk hundreds of miles with babies unless where you are headed is safer than where you are fleeing.
--Leah McElrath

Thanks

Thanks

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

--W. S. Merwin

Reach

Cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of its ligaments, a limber reach for something greater.
--Maria Popova

Rule of Law

Often I fear it will all come to this, that the rule of law and the rights of men will be destroyed by sectarian mischief and nationalistic recklessness.
--Roger Ebert

Never

Thought I saw an eagle,
But it might have been a vulture.
I never could decide.
--Leonard Cohen

Kindness

If most everything is purely capitalist, a society cannot really invest in gentleness and kindness. The only lesson that people will really learn is that their neighbors and peers, young and old, are commodities.
--Umair Haque

Virtue

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
--Plato

Words

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
--Winston Churchill

Eternity

Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is the dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out.
--Joseph Campbell

Today

Let's lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today.
--Stan Lee (1968)

Profound

Religion is a phase a species goes through when it evolves enough intelligence to ask profound questions, but not enough to answer them.
--Bill Flavel

Finding

Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is "finding his place in it," while really it is finding its place in him.
--C.S. Lewis

Lurks

In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade.
--Ronald Syme (The Roman Revolution; 1939)

Depend

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.
--Ernest Hemingway

Drop

No drop of water believes that it is to blame for the flood.
--Jan Kriegel

Voters

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt

Repeat

Very often, when leaders repeat things over and over, they are preparing you for when that meme actually emerges in reality.
--Timothy D. Snyder

Reveal

They let themselves weep, for unlike those who think tears indicate weakness they know that they reveal humanity.
--Eliot A. Cohen

Excuse

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Clouds

Carbon dioxide clouds the mind: it directly degrades our ability to think clearly, and we are walling it into our places of education and pumping it into the atmosphere. The crisis of global warming is a crisis of the mind, a crisis of thought, a crisis in our ability to think another way to be. Soon, we shall not be able to think at all.
--James Bridle

Jews

Anti-Semitism is the rumour about the Jews.
--Theodor Adorno

Just Connect

It's not merely that libraries connect us to books. It's that they connect us to one another.
--Chris Bohjalian

Carbon Footprint

The Internet, the primary vector of information about climate change, is increasingly a vector of the problem itself. The world's data centers already have roughly the same carbon footprint as the global aviation industry, even as people continue to speak of "the cloud" as though it were a barely corporeal entity.
--Mark O'Connell

Understand

To understand fascism, you need to understand patriarchy.
--Jason Stanley

Invented

It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights.
--Thomas Paine

Enemy

I would suggest that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not.
--Senator Barry Goldwater (1962)

Without

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
--John Adams

Meditation

Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.
--Kurt Vonnegut

Gives

Sometimes life gives by taking away.
--Carrie Fisher

Always

Race is like weather--we only talk about it when it's extreme but it's always there.
--Touré

Fixed Star

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
--Justice Robert Jackson (West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943)

Science

The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
--William Hazlitt (1829)

Worst

The worse thing to happen to God was religion, and the worse thing to happen to religion was man.
--Morgan James Talley

Wisdom

Today's conventional wisdom on conventional wisdom is that conventional wisdom can no longer be trusted.
--Ben Terris

Shortcut

Gratitude is a shortcut to happiness.
--Roko Belic

Paradox

Each of us must learn to live with paradox, or we cannot live peacefully or happily even a single day of our lives. In fact, we must even learn to love paradox, or we will never be wise, forgiving, or possess the patience of good relationships.
--Richard Rohr

Empathy

Hey, trolls that keep asking me why I don't care about legal citizens as much as I do "illegals"--fuck off. My caring knows no bounds. You are literally talking about obligatory lines in the sand that separate us. We are all humans. Stop trying to gerrymander my empathy.
--Alyssa Milano

Attention

Lying is not hard. All it requires is the nerve to say things that aren't true, while remembering that even the people who know us best are rarely paying attention.
--Sarah Miller

Holy

Some people like nothing better than to do a mean thing for a holy reason.
--Robertson Davies

Moral Law

If an individual takes a lenient view of the moral law, he may well have a high opinion of himself and be conceited, because he judges himself by a false standard.
--Immanuel Kant

The Artist

Humility is not a virtue propitious to the artist. It is often pride, emulation, avarice, malice--all the odious qualities--which drive a man to complete, elaborate, refine, destroy, renew his work until he has made something that gratifies his pride and envy and greed. And in doing so he enriches the world more than the generous and good, though he may lose his own soul in the process. This is the paradox of artistic achievement.
--Evelyn Waugh

None

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
--William Shakespeare

Forces

There are certain forces within our own national community, composed of men who call themselves American but who would destroy America. They are the forces of dictatorship in our land.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (November 2, 1940)

I Am

I am a cage, in search of a bird.
--Franz Kafka

Mediocre

There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?
--Senator Roman Hruska (1970, R-Nebraska)

Crushed

The price that we pay
When evil walks the planet
And love is crushed like clay
The master races, the chosen people
The burning temple, the weeping cathedrals
--Paul Simon

Perversion

Trump is a horrible person. Sessions is a horrible person. But, Sessions stands between Trump and Mueller. So, in this opera of demons, Sessions is the one you root for. It's all perversion. Welcome to 2018.
--Charles M. Blow

Hopeful

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.
--Rebecca Solnit

Cannot Accept

If the human race as a whole is to survive, the world must find the way by which men and nations can live together in peace. We cannot accept the doctrine that war must be forever a part of man's destiny.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (November 2, 1940)

Cure

The cure for loneliness is solitude.
--Marianne Moore

Imagining

There's a psychological mechanism, I've come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant fear and humiliation of absolute helplessness, it would be very hard to live.
--Aleksandar Hemon

Indifferent

Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols--it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
--William Hazlitt (1823)

The Stories

The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.
--Rebecca Solnit

Politics

Working with demagogues and autocrats is like working with cancer. You fight it. You cut it out. These aren't political differences, it's deciding if we're going to have politics at all.
--Garry Kasparov

Souls

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
--Thomas Paine (1776)

Audited

Unfortunately, when I haven't seen friends in a while they want to "catch up." "Catching up" is a lot like being audited, as it forces you to account for all the time since you last caught up. Over dinner, friends say things like, "How are you?" The short answer is "Fine." It's short because it ends conversation. Then you have to think of something else to say. The long answer is "Miserable." It's long because they'll want to know why, and then you have to tell them. The medium answer is, "Fine, and you?"
--Iris Smyles

Liberty

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
--William Hazlitt

Catalyst

Listen: Love won't always be reciprocated. Its goal is not reciprocity, but elevation. Personal and atmospheric elevation. It's the decision to not allow darkness internally and to perpetuate light both internally and externally. Love is a catalyst.
--Bernice King

Lost America

In prison, I fell in love with my country. I had loved her before then, but like most young people, my affection was little more than a simple appreciation for the comforts and privileges most Americans enjoyed and took for granted. It wasn't until I had lost America for a time that I realized how much I loved her.
--John McCain

Forward

If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, then Fascism and Communism, aided, unconsciously perhaps, by old-line Tory Republicanism, will grow in strength in our land.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (November 4, 1938)

Patriotism

What greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?
--Barack Obama

Temporary

We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell.
--Olivia Laing

Obsessive

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
--Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism; 2004)

Meaning

This world is infinitely layered and mysterious. Every day of our lives, we see far more than we can comprehend, and because the failure to comprehend disquiets us, we lie to ourselves about what we see. We want a simple world, but we live in one that is magnificently complex. Rather than acknowledge the exquisite roundness of creation, we take it in thin slices, and we view each slice through tinted, distorting lenses that further diminish its beauty and obscure truths that await recognition. Complexity implies meaning, and we are afraid of meaning.
--Dean Koontz

Betray

For not only do we reveal ourselves with our words, we also betray ourselves.
--Pascal Mercier

Humanity

Imagining the humanity of people other than myself is my responsibility. And yet the root cause of so much grief is our failure to do just that.
--Jennifer Finney Boylan

Crime

Organized religion was the world's first organized crime syndicate. Other benefits besides money and power were keeping women as slaves and breeders; controlling the masses of society with fear and lies; and creating the ultimate boys club.
--JoAnn Black

Experiment

Of all scientific experiments, the experiment of inhabiting consciousness--that is, a singular consciousness--must be the most extraordinary. Yet we take it for granted, we simply drift with "consciousness" as if it were a river with no banks, bed, source, or destination.
--Joyce Carol Oates

Fuck

If you take away the right to say fuck, you take away the right to say fuck the government.
--Lenny Bruce

Good-Faith

The important distinction is not between theists and naturalists; it's between people who care enough about the universe to make a good-faith effort to understand it, and those who fit it into a predetermined box or simply take it for granted.
--Sean Carroll

Wallet

How far down the current presidential line of succession would you have to go before you found someone who'd return your wallet with the cash still inside?
--Jason Roeder

Noted

People overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others.
--Thomas D. Gilovich

Sane

The kind of madness I had was different. It was quiet, and very, very dangerous. It was a madness designed to keep me sane.
--Helen Macdonald

August 6

Here's a basic question we as a species should pose to the 21st century every August 6 (the anniversary of Hiroshima) through 9 (Nagasaki): What if fewer children were killed?
--Sarah Vowell

Obsessive

Fascism is a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
--Robert O. Paxton (2004)

The Press

The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent ANY part of the government from deceiving the people.
--Justice Hugo L. Black

Bible

It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
--Mark Twain

Feature

This whole decoupling of words from truth is set forth as a feature, not a bug.
--Dahlia Lithwick

Literature

Was it only a dream that Literature was once dangerous, that it had the power to awaken and change us?
--Joy Williams

A.I.

That we assume if artificial intelligence gets too smart it will destroy humanity says a lot more about humans than it does machines.
--Corey Mohler

Dumps

Facebook is the equivalent of a massively profitable factory that just dumps all of its waste into the river and never has to pay for the cost to clean it up.
--Chris Hayes

Humanity

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.
--Herman Melville

Fear

Systematic fear is the condition that makes freedom impossible, and it is aroused by the expectation of institutionalized cruelty as by nothing else.
--Judith Shklar

Vast

The universe is vast, humans are tiny, confused, and terrified, and anything that gets you through your day is fine by me.
--David Roberts

Abandoned

For those who have abandoned hope, we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!
--Ronald Reagan (nomination acceptance speech, July 17 1980)

His Dog

A man's soul can be judged by the way he treats his dog.
--Charles Doran