But there is a reason why religions insist so much on strange events in the sky, as well as on less quantifiable phenomena such as dreams and visions. All of these things cater to our inborn stupidity, and our willingness to be persuaded against all the evidence that we are indeed the center of the universe and that everything is arranged with us in mind.
Christopher Hitchens
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Being present is being connected to All Things. S. KELLEY HARRELL, M. DIV. The collective unconscious, the same as other transpersonal phenomena, is evidence that our mind is ... JAMES OROC The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the... MICHAEL HARRIS Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it appears to be. JEFFREY FRY He is the God who loved you so much that His Son stripped Himself of all heavenly glory to live as a... CRAIG GROESCHEL The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a... JEANETTE CORON As winter comes closer we think about certain events, but can you honestly be of clear mind and soul... GARY F EVANS... Our dreams and stories may contain implicit aspects of our lives even without our awareness. In fact... DANIEL J. SIEGEL The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to y... OSCAR WILDE Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th... DEYTH BANGER As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday pen... G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG The universe is so vast, so immense, we can never expect to explore it all. It is in effect, not so ... CHRISTINA ENGELA Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. Our two main priorities have been schools and fitness, given the rising concern of child obesity and... JASON ENOS All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is ... OTTO DIX Sun shines on my back as I walk away Sun shines on my chest and I return The fall air is c... BRENT M. JONES Indeed, our British friends have decided to leave us - which is very sad for all of us - but life go... FEDERICA MOGHERINI The universe contains many planets which make it what it is – a unified system. In addition, our b... SUZY KASSEM If all the evidence in the universe turned in favour of creationism, I would be the first to admit i... RICHARD DAWKINS A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, a... GINA LAKE The mystical perception (which is only “mystical” if reality is limited to what can be measured ... PETER MATTHIESSEN Here we will see that pharmaceutical companies spend tens of billions of pounds every year trying to... BEN GOLDACRE Our behavior toward each other is the strangest, most unpredictable, and most unaccountable of all t... LEWIS THOMAS Each of us has two distinct choices to make about what we will do with our lives. The first choice w... JIM ROHN Horror as for me is the best choice, you can gain a lot of. I like to be afraid like to see this shi... DEYTH BANGER These three “pointers”—in the world around us, in the world within us, and in our inter-person... KALLISTOS WARE Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well ar... ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom w... JOAN DIDION We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It... COLSON WHITEHEAD There has been so much forest lost all over the country, and it takes years for trees to grow back. ... FREDDY MELLA Feast of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, Martyr, c.155 We may search so far, and reason so long of fa... JOHN DONNE It would be so weird if we knew just as much as we needed to know to answer all the questions of the... GEORGE SAUNDERS Not," Swift said firmly, "for all the tea in China." "That expression has never made sense to m... LISA KLEYPAS Most of all, we remain focused on our Rock that never moves. CRAIG GROESCHEL Dear Child of God, I write these words because we all experience sadness, we all come at times to de... DESMOND TUTU Like seeds planted in the depths of our souls, our dreams are at the center of who we really are. Ou... MELIA KEETON-DIGBY We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep... ERICH FROMM We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sle... ERICH FROMM Then that's what the Northern Lights are. All the lives that we're not living. ADI ALSAID Our eyeball hours are scarce, indeed. That's why Google wants us to do as much as possible onlin... DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life, is rounded with a sleep. The Tempest WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Though there is much we still want, there is much we already have, and that means we have much to lo... A.J. DARKHOLME Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in a firmness of mind and mastery of app... LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA Books that distribute things... with as daring a freedom as we use in dreams, put us on our feet aga... MARSILIO FICINO ... so our customary practice of prayer was brought to mind: how through our ignorance and inexperie... JULIAN OF NORWICH We are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a gre... ANGELINA GRIMKE We are not to restrict God's presence in the world to a limited range of “pious” objects and sit... KALLISTOS WARE Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I have this idea that the reason we have dreams is that we're thinking about things that we don't kn... BENJAMIN ALIRE SáENZ Our conduct should be such that we are loved by one and all..the high as well as the low. It also de... ATHARVA VEDA We all know, from what we experience with and within ourselves, that our conscious acts spring from ... ALBERT EINSTEIN No respecter of evidence has ever found the least clue as to what life is all about, and what people... KURT VONNEGUT There are landscapes in which we feel above us not sky but space. Something larger, deeper than sky ... TOM ROBBINS We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as th... PIERRE-SIMON LAPLACE What's scary to me is that in the wake of Enron there has been this focus on corporate governance in... BETHANY MCLEAN Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life -- in firmness of mind and a mastery of ap... SENECA (SENECA THE ELDER) Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of app... SENECA Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of app... LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA The great and important duty which is incumbent on Christians, is to guard against all appearance of... GEORGE WHITEFIELD Nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary... JERRY BRIDGES They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer... WILLIAM HAZLITT There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success ... ERIC HOFFER Our struggle is--isn't it?--to achieve and retain faith on a lower level. To believe that there is a... C.S. LEWIS That's SHIT! How do you remove it? You just put it inside the trash, easy as that. DEYTH BANGER We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE This is a time for all of us to do as much as we can to help the courageous survivors of this unimag... KATHY IRELAND My life can be so arranged that I can live on whatever I have. If I cannot live as I have lived in t... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more ... JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more ... JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON Our lord is a magic lord as we all desired, and magical things have sought him from over there, and ... LORD DUNSANY Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y... THEHEALTHFOODGURU There is not anything that can so suddenly flood the mind with shame as the conviction of ignorance,... HILAIRE BELLOC The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is -... MARK HELPRIN There can be many reasons to travel, but wandering into the world for no particular reason is a subl... MICHAEL LEUNIG It's going to be so tough for all of them and I know they all do different things to help the annive... JIMMIE JOHNSON Of course there is such a thing as too much doubt, for we ought to accept what is true. But there is... J. BUDZISZEWSKI Our morality is based on so many factors: of where we were born, who we were born to, what values we... OSCAR ISAAC Living here in North America - I have been Americanized. When I go back home now, there are things t... KANDYSE MCCLURE The symbol of Goddess gives us permission. She teaches us to embrace the holiness of every natural, ... SUE MONK KIDD The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that mos... ALAN W. WATTS The downfall of the attempts of governments and leaders to unite mankind is found in this- in the wr... C. JOYBELL C. Without anything being said, there were no women at our lunches. Not that we were talking pussy. Or ... CRAIG BROWN Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions are great poems and, when recognized as such,... JOSEPH CAMPBELL Not only is there a right to be happy, there is a duty to be happy. So much sadness exists in the wo... JOHN S. BONNELL Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ... GERMANY KENT God freely created us so that we might know, love, and serve him in this life and be happy with him ... IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA Our parents are not the only people on this planet, and we should not base our life choices on what ... LUKASZ LANIECKI In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak... ALAIN DE BOTTON There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with wonder and longing—for the same reason t... NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON We are concerned and remain concerned that the (Uzbek) government is trying to silence human rights ... SEAN MCCORMACK Commemoration of Petroc, Abbot of Padstow, 6th century Faith is indeed the energy of our whole uni... B. F. WESTCOTT What I loved the most about Oakland was that all of my neighbors came in as many colors, ideas, and ... PATRICIA POLACCO As we mature in faith, our willingness is tested, expanded, and refined. We become more conscious of... JEANNETTE A. BAKKE Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won... ALAIN DE BOTTON It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly ... VIRGINIA WOOLF It is perfectly possible to live a life from cradle to grave that is entirely dishonest.One might ne... STEPHEN FRY In our folk nobody has any experience of youth, there’s barely even any time for being a toddler. ... FRANZ KAFKA
More Christopher Hitchens
To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In one way, I suppose, I have been 'in denial' for some time, knowingly burning the candle a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Chemotherapy isn't good for you. So when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, 'Well... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When Caroline Kennedy managed to say 'you know' more than 200 times in an interview with the... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll b... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particula... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, pu... 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CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Well, we can't say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-ch... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imper... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in p... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows t... 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CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penelope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn't even notice. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I don't consider myself to be that credulous. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It's not at all good when your cancer is 'palpable' from the outside. Especially when, a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be te... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When you hear people demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in courtrooms and schoolrooms,... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialec... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The one unforgivable sin is to be boring CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never ag... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I'm not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and g... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It would be nice to think that the menacing aspects of North Korea were for display also, that the b... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every li... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful becaus... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instea... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatev... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS As I never tire of saying, heat is not the antithesis of light but rather the source of it. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS British diplomats and Anglo-American types in Washington have a near-superstitious prohibition on ut... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate onese... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front f... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in rememb... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The Islamists will try to spoil everything for everyone. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn dir... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you di... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indi... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper an... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There can be no progress without head-on confrontation. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I vote and I do jury duty. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, i... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is ap... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelie... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had�... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I still think like a Marxist in many ways. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I think the materialist conception of history is valid. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A terrible thing has now happened to religion. Except in the places where it can still enforce itsel... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In this way he will draw men to him by the strong cords of their passions, made reason-proof by bein... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religion, then, partakes of equal elements of the canine and the feline. It exacts maximum servility... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, l... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS only while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents ever... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition’s chief victims are those persons who ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS All religions must, at their core, look forward to the end of this world and to the longed-for momen... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS A saving grace of the human condition (if I may phrase it like that) is a sense of humor. Many write... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Finally, I want to come to the question of sex. If anything proves that religion is not just man-mad... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The pre-history of our species is hag-ridden with episodes of nightmarish ignorance and calamity, fo... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS It is certain, that, in every religion, however sublime the verbal definition which it gives of its ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Believing then … that human life is actually worth living, one can combat one’s natural pessimis... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In January 1821, Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams to “encourage a hope that the human mind will s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS How sad to be a woman—not to know Aught of the glory of this breast of snow, All unconcerned to co... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Arguments for atheism can be divided into two main categories: those that dispute the existence of g... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS If we stay with animal analogies for a moment, owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. In other word... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main pr... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religion invents a problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in the image of g... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death i... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There are, after all, atheists who say they wish the fable were true but are unable to suspend the r... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the sp... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or un... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and re... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything i... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John B... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS So, whenever the subject of Iraq came up, as it did keep on doing through the Clinton years, I had n... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, bu... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the childre... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless s... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The onl... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The quality you most admire in a man? Courage moral and physical: 'anima'—the ability to th... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really no... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adher... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS [Said during a debate when his opponent asserted that atheism and belief in evolution lead to Naz... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in the world and on top of his brief. But th... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to th... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the ... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS