Great Quotes II: Source and Context are Key

[Arakhor]

"I cannot ... believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind." ~ Reverend Charles Kingsley (1819 - 1875)

(I came across this quote today for the first time in a book on philosophy.)

 

[say1988]

Out of curiosity, do you have the context of that quote?

 

[Arakhor]

Yes. It was part of his highly critical response to Omphalos, a book by Philip Gosse published that year. Wikipedia has a whole article on it (of course).

 

[Dachs]

Linton Barwick: It's early days, my friends. All roads lead to Munich.
[leaves]
Malcolm Tucker: 'All roads lead to Munich... ' What the [intercourse] does that mean?
Simon Foster: Well, I think it means...uh...actually, no, no, I don't know what it means.
-In the Loop (2009)

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

"I'm trying to make a nice cold drink, not perform cold fusion."
-penguinz0, on having a shaken drink explode in Bartender Gameplay and Commentary

 

[Traitorfish]

"The sweetness and fallacy of Christianity is that it offered for our consideration a God who thought he could save the human race, but actually couldn’t. And we know enough to know that we invented that God. Any humanist knows that. But many atheists will blame–what?–the credulity of ”religious people”–not themselves, for not knowing it. Where is the logic in that? Religious people did not create that God. The human spirit did: your own ancestors did. And they wrote the books they then ascribed to him. Reject him as you must. And you must. But the way to salvation is far from clear, and the militant rejection of that god does not make you a humanist. How could it?"

R. Joseph Hoffman being clever and eloquent, as is his way.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

That reminds me of a lecture by an Oxford professor I saw on television a few years ago. He went through The God Delusion using Dawkins' own logic to argue atheism was as much a mental 'disease' as Dawkins claimed religion to be.

Fundamentalists and antitheists have a lot more in common than either side will readily admit.

 

[Traitorfish]

I think what that suggests is that Dawkins logic is a big load of arse, rather than it being correct but, aha!, applying to him as well.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Genetic engineering, circa 1626 A.D.

"By art likewise we make them greater or smaller than their kind is, and contrariwise dwarf them and stay their growth; we make them more fruitful and bearing than their kind is, and contrariwise barren and not generative. Also we make them differ in color, shape, activity, many ways. We find means to make commixtures and copulations of divers kinds, which have produced many new kinds, and them not barren, as the general opinion is. We make a number of kinds of serpents, worms, flies, fishes of putrefaction, whereof some are advanced (in effect) to be perfect creatures, like beasts or birds, and have sexes, and do propagate. Neither do we this by chance, but we know beforehand of what matter and commixture, what kind of those creatures will arise."
-the Head of Salomon's House, in New Atlantis by Sir Francis Bacon

Genuinely disturbing (italics by author)

"We could believe that we are somehow wrong about the nature of everything that surrounds us. The world of conventional objects which the being with the arm describes is not subject to the conventional and comprehensible laws we believe it to be. Its dream-logic about ovens and cakes and casts and invulnerability is the way the world works, not a deluded fantasy by a buried giant. The Foundation's attempts to rigorously study it are futile, because reason itself is a bizarre delusion. This is the most horrible answer, and what I'm trying to get at."
-ophite, discussion on SCP-1193

 

[Verarde]

 

[Dachs]

"As I live and breathe," she scoffed. "Have we finally seen Han Solo do something unselfish? Are you going soft? Who knows, you may even pick up a little morality one day, if you ever wake up and get wise to yourself."

He stopped, his leer gone. He glared at her for a moment, then said, "I already know all about morality, Jess. A friend of mine made a decision once, thought he was doing the moral thing. Hell, he was. But he'd been conned. He lost his career, his girl, everything. This friend of mine, he ended up standing there while they ripped the rank and insignia off his tunic. The people who didn't want him put up against a wall and shot were laughing at him. A whole planet. He shipped out of there and never went back."

She watched his face become ugly. "Wouldn't anyone testify for - your friend?" she asked softly.

He sniggered. "His commanding officer committed perjury against him. There was only one witness in his defense, and who's going to believe a Wookiee?"

-Jessa Vandangante and Han Solo, Han Solo at Stars' End (Brian Daley, 1979)

 

[madviking]

No, hell is a place where people black belts with brown shoes.

 

[Quackers]

From a "Man for all Seasons". Some dialogue from a trial about laws.

More’s accuser says he would 'cut down every law in England' to go after the devil. More retorts: 'Oh, and when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you, where would you hide, all the laws being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man’s laws not God’s, and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?'

Then he says quietly: 'Yes, I’d give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety’s sake.'

 

[Cutlass]

"I feel really lucky to have been a model when it was meaningful" Cindy Crawford.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

"Science takes care of the physical, religion has the spiritual. It's like carrying a laptop and a bottle of cola in the same bag: They do different things, and as long as one doesn't spill all over the other, you've got no problems. Also, only [a-holes] pressurize their cola to spray it all over other people."
-Luke McKinney, 7 Ridiculous Things People Believe About the 'God Particle'

 

[Traitorfish]

Eh, "Non-overlapping magisteria" is only slightly less ridiculous a model than the Kulturkampf one.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Then what should we strive for then? If a policy of non-interference of religion in science and vice versa is unsatisfactory, what do you propose?

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't think that "religion" and "science" represent two comfortably non-overlapping spheres, but I also don't think that they represent irreconcilable antagonists. The relationship between the two is complicated, shifting, and, tragically, not one that can be summed up in a slogan.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I'm asking for plans of action, not descriptions of relationships. You didn't really answer my question.

Anyway, proper police procedure.
"Photographic identification of fleeing criminals may be obtained with a recently perfected camera which is attached to a pistol or rifle and worked by the gun's trigger."
-"Camera on Gun to Trap Crooks", Popular Science, page 33, July 1934 issue.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm asking for plans of action, not descriptions of relationships. You didn't really answer my question.

I don't even know what "plan of action" means in this context. Best I could offer is "stop believing in god, you cretins", but somehow I doubt that will be very popular.