November 2011
“If you are required to kill someone today, on the promise of a political leader that someone else shall live in peace tomorrow, believe me, you are not only a double murderer, you are a suicide, too.”
—Katherine Anne Porter
Vietnamese deaths during the Vietnam war were approximately 6,000,000 people. The approximate population of Vietnam during the war was 33,000,000. This means that the war killed 18 percent of the total population of Vietnam. Proportionately, 18 percent of the United States is 50,000,000. That would be like killing every man, woman and child in Arkansas, Mississippi, West Virginia, Oregon, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa.
“The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.”
—
~ Robert G. Ingersoll Quoting Ferdinand Magellan
Ingersoll uses this quote to make a point: ‘The trouble with most people is, they bow to what is called authority.’ Ingersoll’s thrust in this article is that ‘It is the duty of each and every one to maintain his individuality’ and ‘There can be nothing more utterly subversive of all that is really valuable than the suppression of honest thought—No man, worthy of the form he bears, will at the command of church or state solemnly repeat a creed his reason scorns.’ I agree with Ingersoll. If you do not, that is certainly your privilege.
“It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
—Albert Einstein
“Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.”
—Steve Eley
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“It is hard to free fools from chains they revere.”
—Voltaire
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”
—Mohandas Gandhi
“If you can conceive of morality without god, why can you not conceive of society without government?”
—Peter Saint-André
100 million Americans believe in UFOs & Witches →
abc.net.au
A study shows that only 42% of Americans believe in evolution, while 60% believe in Hell and the Devil. A terrifyingly high 33% indicated they believe in UFOs, witches and astrology (around 100 million people).
82% of those surveyed said they believe in God, with 79% saying they believe in miracles.
I must admit I am surprised that only 42% believe in evolution.
“When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?”
—Chuck Palahniuk
“If you could be God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?”
—Chuck Palahniuk
“The law” is an android mixture of (a) pre-existing social norms that are beneficial to society and could be followed even if no law existed, and (b) a set of advantages to a ruling minority that are harmful to the masses, and can be enforced on them only by terror.”
—Peter Kropotkin
“Every crime is born of necessity. If you want less crime, you must change the conditions. Poverty makes crime. Want, rags, crusts, misfortune - all these awake the wild beast in man, and finally he takes, and takes contrary to law, and becomes a criminal. And what do you do with him? You punish him. Why not punish a man for having consumption? The time will come when you will see that that is just as logical. What do you do with the criminal? You send him to the penitentiary. Is he made better? Worse. The first thing you do is to try to trample out his manhood, by putting an indignity upon him. You mark him. You put him in stripes. At night you put him in darkness. His feeling for revenge grows. You make a wild beast of him, and he comes out of that place branded in body and soul, and then you won’t let him reform if he wants to.”
—Robert Ingersoll
“The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.”
—H.L. Mencken
