Some of my favorite quotations.
"You can believe what you want to believe in. I just don't trust superstition." - Matt Cox
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things." 1 Corinthians 13:11
"Learn reason above all. Learn clear thought. Learn to know what is from what seems to be, and what you wish to be. This is the key to everything. The truth of reality. The reality of truth. What is will set you free." - Surak of Vulcan
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in holy scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it." - The Buddha, from the Kalama Sutta
"I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs." - Bertrand Russell
"It's a bad idea to base morality on ancient myths. Sooner or later people come to the realization that they are just myths, and then they no longer have a reason to be moral. It is better to teach people to be moral for their own benefit. Behaving morally and encouraging others to do the same contributes to the existence of a society that provides the greatest amount of happiness to the members of that society, including ourselves." - Mark A. Sebring
"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." - Thomas Jefferson
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." - John Stuart Mill
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation." - Henry David Thoreau
"So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them." - Sylvia Plath
"But after all, we must remember that art is art. Still, on the other hand water is water, isn't it? And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like apple sauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does." - Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding
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