Brilliant things I didn't say

In my reading I collect quotes I like, especially quotes that illuminate issues I'm precoccupied with: the class system, religion, politics, reason. I keep them in my Facebook profile, where I doubt anyone ever goes. I thought I'd put some of them here, another place they're sure not to upset the social order.

"Sacred books are as dangerous as snakes, but what makes them particularly poisonous is their sophistical methods of argument, and consequent abandonment of reason, their rejection of testing and debate, and their implicit disparagement of experience, since they, not life as lived, contain all that really needs to be known." -- William Gass

"No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch paper." -- Mike Royko

"You have made ample use of the times of ignorance, superstition, and infatuation, to strip us of our inheritances, and trample us under your feet, that you might fatten on the substance of the unfortunate. But tremble for fear that the day of reason will arrive!" -- Voltaire

"Imagine this place is not about us and never has been and never will be and that this is the history it teaches us and that this is what we must learn and never seem willing to study." -- Charles Bowden

"The relation of stupidity and evil has long been noted." -- Leonard Michaels

"The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide" -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The sure mark of an ideology, in science and philosophy as in politics, is the denying of obvious facts." -- Colin McGinn

"As for the view that God's eternal blessedness should be a comfort to the poor, it has always been held by the rich, but the poor are beginning to grow weary of it." -- Bertrand Russell

"If it is the purpose of the Cosmos to evolve mind, we must regard it as rather incompetent in having produced so little in such a long time." -- Bertrand Russell

"Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980. Madonna is like Nero; she marks the turning point.” -- Joni Mitchell

"One may say, broadly speaking, that Protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbors good." -- Bertrand Russell

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." -- Thomas Jefferson

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”– Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82

Education

I was in Borders today, and I wandered into the science section, and there were all those troublesome Darwin books. When I hear people arguing that evolution isn't true, I often think, "Don't take my word for it, go to the source." "The Origin of Species" is so bursting at the seams with evidence, experiments, explanations, you almost don't need any of the books about evolution that have been published in the 150-or-so years since then. It's a staggeringly great book.

But then I reflect the people I know who don't believe in evolution would not be convinced, no matter what anyone said, let alone Darwin himself. As I looked through the books, I was suddenly reminded of people I knew in high school who were impatient to get out of school and start working. They were in school because someone was making them go. They always asked the same question: "Why are we learning this? We'll never use it after we leave here."

I think, are those same people now Tea Partiers? Or were they lucky enough to rediscover how wonderful the world is, wonderful enough to learn about?

A little more on Thomas Paine

As a result of writing "The Age of Reason," Thomas Paine lost most of his friends. Only six people showed up at his funeral. In my estimation, that means he must have done something right. Here is what Robert G. Ingersoll said about him after his death:

"Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June, 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine." [Source: Wikipedia]

My kind of person.