User:Frederick

Quotes

"Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these." - Ovid "Remember that in a thousand years, or some such, historians will publicly offer their right eye to know what you can see now, at first hand." - Eugene Manlove Rhodes "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn "Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage." - Winston Churchill "False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing." - Joseph-Marie de Maistre "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." - Christopher Hitchens "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." - H. L. Mencken "Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason." - William Godwin "A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts." - Harold MacMillan "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams "I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him." - Abraham Lincoln "It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Sherlock Holmes "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" - Isaac Asimov "There is nothing to gain by engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed man, even if he treads on a fine line." - Albert Einstein "ONLY THE MADMAN IS ABSOLUTELY SURE." - Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus Trilogy! "That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." - Benjamin Franklin "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin "No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice... No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations." - Dwight D. Eisenhower "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - Dwight D. Eisenhower "Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws." - Calvin Coolidge "It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan "That a particular specified event or coincidence will occur is very unlikely. That some astonishing unspecified events will occur is certain. That is why remarkable coincidences are noted in hindsight, not predicted with foresight." - David G. Meyers "Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you." - Dara O'Briain "He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means 'I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve.' It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help." - Isaac Asimov on Robert A. Heinlein and libertarian ethics "The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless." - Alan Moore "On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." - Charles Babbage "Lies of omission do not exist. The concept is a very human one. It is the product of your story writing again. You have written a story about the truth, making emotional demands of it, and in particular, of those in possession of it. Your demands are based on a feeling of entitlement to the facts, which is very childish. You can never know all of the facts." - Doc Scratch, Homestuck, by Andrew Hussie "This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for." - Douglas Adams, The Salmon Of Doubt "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet "E pur si muove." - Galileo Galilei