2029 "Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?" [Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer"]

2874 "So why are they having such a good time? Probably because they wouldn't think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or -- at best -- unrealistic. Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify their own anti-gay attitudes." [from `And Say Hi To Joyce' by lesbian columnist Deb Price]

3644 "You know when it's time to clean the refrigerator when something closes the door from the inside."

2924 "The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society." [Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, Dec. 30, 1981]

3748 "Press any key except... no, No, NOn NOT THAT ONE!"

1810 "...but when you come to Heritage USA, remember to bring your Bible and your VISA card - because the Bible is the Holy Truth, and God doesn't take American Express."

2214 "In the infancy of new religions, the wise and learned commonly esteem the matter too inconsiderable to deserve their attention or regard. And when afterwards they would willingly detect the cheat, in order to undeceive the deluded multitude, the season is now past, and the records and witnesses, which might clear up the matter, have perished beyond recovery." [David Hume, "Of Miracles"]

3190 "The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood." [Leslie Stephen]

3031 "Colfax, Placer County. Yesterday's crowd of pilgrims, some of whom arrived at midnight, saw a blue-gray light form over the right shoulder of a five- foot statue of Jesus near the altar of the 40-year-old Catholic church. For some, the shimmering light that turned green-pink bore the shape of a shawl covering a woman's head and shoulders. Sometimes the image was sharp; other times it was fuzzy. The eerie image appeared about 9:30 a.m., as it has every day since Thanksgiving, and remained for about an hour. At one point, a second light gold in color and resembling the shape of a crown or halo briefly appeared directly above the first image. At the moment the gold light appeared, many people in the line outside said they spotted a rainbow over the church. Inside the 200-seat church, pilgrims gasped, prayed, wept and stared at the image. ...According to James Phelps, a physics professor at Sacramento State University, the image is a phenomenon caused by natural light refracting through a stained-glass window and then bouncing off a light fixture and onto the wall. 'There's nothing exotic, nothing esoteric about it,' said the optics expert, who observed the image at the request of a local newspaper." [Martin Halstuk, San Francisco Chronicle, 8 December 1990]

1378 "Roughly, science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know." Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 219.

636 "Where is the good in eternal torture?"

1787 "...if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.... the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind." [Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"]

1999 "So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong." [Walter Bagehot, Literary Studies]

2527 "There is no rustic so rude but that, if he dreams or fancies anything, it must be the whisper of the Holy Ghost, and he himself a prophet." [Martin Luther]

1807 If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?

2164 "And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God." [Adolph Hitler, _Mein Kampf_, pp.174]

2226 "God, in any but a purely philosophical, and one is almost tempted to say Pickwickian sense, turns out to be a product of the human mind. As an independent or unitary being active in the affairs of the universe, he does not exist." [Julian Huxley, Science, Religion and Human Nature, Conway Memorial Lecture, 1930]

1460 "The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray." [Robert G. Ingersoll]

2951 "And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky, Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help Rolls impotently on as Thou or I." [from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam trans. Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883)]

3612 "Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc'-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers."