10

"Curiosity is the very basis of Education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat... I say only that the cat died nobly." -- Arnold Edinborough 1922-2006

2492

"I keep hearing that Jesus Christ is coming, but nobody knows his tour dates." [Michael Lucas]

3035

"To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true." [Bertrand Russell, "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization"]

3076

"Nearly 25 percent of the nation's 1,411 television stations now have full- time religious programming, according to the 1989 Directory of Religious Broadcasting. That reflects a 30 percent jump over 1988. This doesn't count the three religious television networks, including Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, or the hundreds of stations that carry some religious programming. Of the nation's 10,546 radio stations, 1,485 or 14 percent, are Christian stations -- a 7 percent increase over 1988. Dwarfing the impact of U.S. radio stations is the worldwide network of evangelical ministries that preaches to Third World countries via shortwave radio. From high in the Andes mountains in Quito, Ecuador, HCJB World Radio -- which stands for Heralding Christ Jesus' Blessings -- uses its combined 1-million-watt shortwave power of several transmitter stations to broadcast 24 hours a day to 80 percent of the globe." [Annie Nakao, San Francisco Examiner, 23 July 1989]

1721

"The night of December 25, to which date the Nativity of Christ was ultimately assigned, was exactly that of the birth of the Persian savior Mithra, who, as an incarnation of eternal light, was born the night of the winter solstice (then dated December 25) at midnight, the instant of the turn of the year from increasing darkness to light." [Joseph Campbell, _The Mythic Image_, Bollingen Series C, Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 33]

387

"I don't see how anybody can read the Bible and believe it's the word of God, or believe that it's anything but a barbarous story of a barbaric people." -- Culbert Olson, governor of California (1938-43)

896

"I can't stand here and argue with your biblical rhetoric." -- Agent Mulder, Miracle Man

750

"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose." -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Baron von Humboldt, 1813

300

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." -- Ronald Reagan

802

sign at a travel agency "Welcome ... Please Go Away"

344

"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion." -- President Abraham Lincoln

3127

"God is dead. Let us not understand by this that he does not exist or even that he no longer exists. He is dead. He spoke to us and is silent. We no longer have anything but his cadaver. Perhaps he slipped out of the world, somewhere else like the soul of a dead man. Perhaps he was only a dream...God is dead." [Sartre]

1991

"My aim is to argue that the universe can come into existence without intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations." [Peter William Atkins, preface to _The Creation_]

2747

"The so-called geologic ages are essentially synonymous with the evolutionary theory of origins. The latter is the anti-God conspiracy of Satan himself." [Dr Henry Morris, President of the Institute for Creation Research, 1978]

1540

"'But if oxen (and horses) and lions.... could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen.... Aethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair.' Like many later critics of anthropomorphism, Xenophanes evidently did not question the gods themselves but only their human attributes. Later Western writers think the Greek gods especially anthropomorphic, but gods in many other religions are equally so." Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 178.

1983

"We are only fabulous beasts, after all." [John Ashbery]

1766

"No deity will save us, we must save ourselves. Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful." [Humanist Manifesto II, Prometheus Books, 1973]

830

"In view of the stupidity of the majority of the people, a widely held opinion is more likely to be foolish than sensible." -- Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

2661

"A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion. [H. L. Mencken]

1251

"Nor is 'naturalism' the issue when the historian employs the principle of analogy. As F.H. Bradley showed in The Presuppositions of Critical History, no historical inference is possible unless the historian assumes a basic analogy of past experience with present. If we do not grant this, nothing will seem amiss in believing reports that A turned into a werewolf or that B changed lead into gold. 'Hey, just because we don't see it happening today doesn't prove it never did!' One could as easily accept the historicity of Jack and the Beanstalk on the same basis, as long as one's sole criterion of historical probability is 'anything goes!'" Robert M. Price, "By This Time He Stinketh"