Quotes

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

“You can bet everything will come to an end. It's going to be ugly and it's going to be a mess, and it's going to be something that somebody did in the name of God....”

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

“The best cure for Christianity is to read the Bible.”

“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”

“The U.S. Constitution may not be perfect, but it's better than what we've got now.”

“I love the Pope, I love seeing him in his Pope-Mobile, his three feet of bullet proof plexi-glass. That's faith in action folks! You know he's got God on his side.”

“I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an explanation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious ad hoc magic.”

“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.”

“Oldness comes to rile/The youth who dream suicide.”

“I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.”

“There is in every village a torch: the schoolmaster -- and an extinguisher: the parson.”

“I think it's interesting the two drugs that are legal - alcohol and cigarettes, two drugs that do absolutely nothing for you at all - are legal, and the drugs that might open your mind up to realise how you're being fucked every day of your life? Those drugs are against the law. Coincidence? See, I'm glad mushrooms are against the law, cos I took 'em one time, you know what happened to me? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours, going, 'My God, I love everything.' Yeah, now if that isn't a hazard to our countries...How are we gonna justify arms dealing if we know we're all one?”

“Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.”

“With or without religion you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

“If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate.”

“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”

“An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.”

“By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!”

“So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.”

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”

“Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”

“The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient.”

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.”

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

“I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence...”

“There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

“Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.”

“Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.”

“Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”

“Don't hate the media, become the media.”

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey - don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride... And we... kill those people.”

“Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.”

“...it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions.”

“You know "that look" women get when they want sex? Me neither.”

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

“My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.”

“People ask me what I think about that woman priest thing. What, a woman priest? Women priests. Great, great. Now there's priests of both sexes I don't listen to.”

“Puritanism- The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

“A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”

“War is terrorism with a bigger budget.”

“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.”

“Religion ... has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? Because you're just not. If someone votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. ... But on the other hand, if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say 'I respect that'.”

“Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither.”

“Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

“Hell is full of musical amateurs.”

“Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.”

“My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.”

“If the FBI's motivating factor for busting down the Koresh compound was child abuse, how come we never see Bradley tanks smashing into Catholic churches?”

“The nice thing about internet standards is that there are so many to choose from...”

“We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.”

“Javascript is the duct tape of the Internet.”

“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.”

“A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. Do you think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fuckin' cross? It's kind of like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on.”

“Supreme Court says pornography is anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thoughts; that's their definition, essentially. No artistic merit, causes sexual thoughts. Hmm. . . . Sounds like . . . every commercial on television, doesn't it?”

“Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.”

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

“It's been suggested that if the supernaturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?”

“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.”

“You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life.”

“I love to go down to the school yard and watch all the little children jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming. They don't know I'm only using blanks.”

“I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming.”

“If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?”

“Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff.”

“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”

“I don't like people who take drugs... Customs men for example.”

“The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents”

“Always program as if the person who will be maintaining your program is a violent psychopath that knows where you live.”

“Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.”

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

“It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive.”

“A bargain is something you can't use at a price you can't resist.”

“Ayo, lesson here, Bey. You come at the king, you best not miss.”