The Quote Thread.

[ajmargarine]

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”

“Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”

“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

“Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”

“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”

--5 quotes from Eckhart Tolle

[kb coolman]

"Only a ninja can sneak up on another ninja." - Tim Minchin

[carlo]

Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust: "Simple folk never sense the devil's presence, even if his hands are on their throats."

[Splendour]

Originally Posted by carlo

Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust: "Simple folk never sense the devil's presence, even if his hands are on their throats."

A+.

[Hack4444]

And by the same token, the pseudo-intellectual atheist, proud in his "knowledge", "logic", and "reason", can't sense god even when he puts his arm around their shoulders.
I think you are rubbing off on me Sp.

[stueycal]

Hack, this is a quote thread. I am only a pseudo-intellectual but I can still read the thread title. Post quotes, or don't post at all. Especially when the content is 100% trolling and no content. /End rant

No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe them.

-- Ernest Renan, The Life of Jesus (1863), from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.

-- George Santayana, "Supernaturalism," Little Essays, No. 108, quoted from James A Haught, editor, 2000 Years of Disbelief

There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give his work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.

-- Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1968), p. 19

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

-- Seneca, quoted from Famous Dead Non-theists

What the mind doesn’t understand it worships or fears.

-- Alice Walker

But it is neither as God nor as a man that Jesus must be regarded, but as a myth. No such person ever lived either as a human or divine existence. He is simply a creature of fancy, the fruit of the imagination. He is a character of the brain, the creation of religious genius.

-- Lemuel K Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?" and Other Essays (1911)

Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: "My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly." This stranger is a theologian.

-- Denis Diderot, Addition aux Pensees philosophiques, from John Daintith, et al, eds. The Macmillan Dictionary of Quotations (2000) p. 34, quoted from R, Rotando, in a personal letter to Cliff Walker (December 17, 2001)

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

-- Denis Diderot, Observations on Drawing Up of Laws (1774), repr. in Lester G Crocker, ed, Selected Writings, ed. (1966), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

[Hack4444]

From the OP. "Feel free to quote yourself if you have a good one."

I simply thought I had a good one. (until she told me the truth)

You have made commentary as well as quotes too you know Stu.

Now a couple from Jefferson:

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own" [Letter to H. Spafford, 1814].

"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."[in a letter to S. Kercheval, 1810]

[brandx]

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
Albert Einstein

[Wizard-50]

"My life is no longer an exercise in survival, rather it is a gift of revival."

-Me

[giants73756]

lol

[butterfly pony]

pooter is killing this thread

[NotReady]

Waugh

Brideshead Revisited

"It's frightening," Julia once said, "to think how completely you have forgotten Sebastian."

"He was the forerunner."

"That's what you said in the storm. I've thought since: perhaps I am only a forerunner, too."

Perhaps, I thought, while her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke - a thought to fade and vanish like smoke without a trace - perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.

[Splendour]

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.
Evelyn Waugh

[Splendour]

We are here to forgive, heal, and reconcile God's Body. That is what happens every time we care for someone else or resolve problems that divide us. Truth ought to be used to bring unification, not to divide further. This is what Paul meant in Eph. 4:15 and 16,

15 But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

In other words, truth in love is the key to healing the whole body, so that it is without division, and so that each individual part (organ and cell) works properly and can grow and build itself in love. Our growth is dependent upon this love, because not truth alone, but "truth in love" is the measure of spiritual growth.


Dr. Stephen E. Jones

[ILOVEPOKER929]

Delusion" is just bias gone wrong (well, that or mental illness). Bias has been observed to be universal in every cognitive process in which we've been able to test for it. And I speculate that bias is universal because, nine times out of ten, it works.

Attempting to strip away bias is a dangerous gamble because it's attempting to remove a deep-seated mechanism that is a very strong part of how we've learned to adapt to our environment. We don't necessarily even have the tools to go without it. Thankfully, most people are really ****ty at dropping their biases and preconceptions and cherished myths. When they do succeed (or are more or less forced to acknowledge that they're wrong), they seem to react pretty consistently with distress.

So I don't think looking for truth is a good idea, in general. I'd bet more people dash themselves against the rocks than make the truth work for them (and even more just waste time).

Truth is worthless and often counter-productive. I seek it because I'm a sick individual.

Both the above quotes are from Madnak.