Here’s this month’s collection of recently encountered quotes amusing and thoughtful. There’s a somewhat philosophical theme this month …
The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.
[Penn Jillette]
Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance.  It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.  A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
[Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865]
When you try to form an institution around such a loose set of non-beliefs [Zen Buddhism], and around that kind of idea of what spiritual authority means, you’re going to have some difficulties. How do you get all sorts of people on the same page about something when one of your core ideas is that no two people are ever on the same page about anything?
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/more-buddhist-scandals/5464]
One should never immediately attribute bad intent to a person holding a position one disagrees with.
[Ben Shapiro]
Those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must forever remain children.
[Cicero]
Brexit. The undefined being negotiated by the unprepared in order to get the unspecified for the uninformed.
[unknown]
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson]
Beware of purity workers [who are] ready to accept and endorse any amount of coercive and degrading treatment of their fellow creatures in the fatuous belief that you can oblige human beings to be moral by force.
[Josephine Butler, 1828-1906]
Naturism brings confidence, positivity and better health for body and mind. After all, we are born this way. We are part of Nature.
Most people have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those circumstances there are far worse things than gin.
[Terry Pratchett, The Thief of Time]
All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.
[Douglas Adams]

Our regular monthly round-up of quotes interesting and amusing …
The deeper we go down the internet-porn wormhole, the more it seems narrow-minded to understand porn exclusively in terms of what kind of sex it “teaches” us to have. Because in the streaming era, the amount and diversity of porn we watch exponentially outpaces that of the sex we have … Pornography is more than a mere causal agent in the way we screw. It has also become a laboratory of the sexual imagination – and as such, it offers insight into a collective sexual consciousness that is in a state of high-speed evolution.
[Maureen O’Connor; “Pornhub Is the Kinsey Report of Our Time” at https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/pornhub-and-the-american-sexual-imagination.html]
The globalists are using cats to depopulate whites. Because cats act as surrogate babies they cause white women to not want to have kids. Cats are like a parasite that sucks the maternal instinct from white women.
[Unknown]
We’re not going to introduce ID cards. We’re going to introduce cards of identification.
[David Davis, Brexit Minister]
Religion is the practice of training minds to ignore evidence, reason and logic and increasing the ability of believing in fairytales of Bronze Age and of being proud of them.
[Raghu K Kanam]
It’s an important problem. It’s important because it justifies the many attempts to solve it.
[Dr Sabine Hossenfelder]
We seem okay with violence, but nudity we race to criticise and censor.
[Eva Mendes]
Devon Rex: a delightfully alien-looking cat described by the The Cat Fancier’s Association as a madcap mix of a “cat, a dog, a monkey, and Dennis the Menace”
Civilised disagreement is the hallmark of intelligent people in a humane and rational society
[Robert Neuschul on Facebook]
What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
[Virginia Woolf]
Only you can fill in what’s missing. It’s not something another person can do for you.
[Haruki Murakami]
A number of prostitutes in Nevada, where brothels are legal, have organized as “Hookers for Healthcare” to oppose the healthcare legislation now pending in the US Senate. This poses a real quandary. I don’t know which side to believe. I mean, on one side, there’s this small group of amoral people who every day debase themselves by doing anything, no matter how disgusting and depraved, to please the men who give them money. And on the other side, we’ve got hookers.
[Phil Kloer]
Another round next month.

Time for our monthly selection of amusing, interesting and thought-provoking quotes.
Strong espresso drinks are all that stand between us and total creative defeat.
Hari Kunzru
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
Charles Darwin; The Descent of Man (1871)
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenceless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgement simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
Dietrich Sonhoeffen (1906-1945) “On Stupidity” in Letters and Papers from Prison
What a society chooses to allow of female toplessness, as with art, speaks volumes. It is entirely possible to see how a society’s rules governing access to women’s bodies continue, ultimately, to be rules governing what is considered a male property right. There are constant contestations over breastfeeding in public, toplessness on beaches, bare breasted political protesting, and what constitutes obscenity and pornography. In mainstream views and in social media, for example, female toplessness is largely prohibited, while barely camouflaged sexually objectifying pornography, that prioritizes male sexual pleasure, is not.
Soraya Chemaly, from the Foreword to Bare Reality.
There comes a time in life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. Surround yourself with people who make you laugh, forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right. Pray for the ones who don’t. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is part of life, getting back up is living.
Unknown
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
Martin Luther King, A Testament of Hope
No person who can read is ever successful at cleaning out an attic.
Ann Landers
One of Joyce’s most valuable bequests to writers is that none of them ever need to write a novel like Ulysses again; a benefaction unhappily sometimes disregarded, especially in the US. One feels that Joyce, even if pretty able, is not quite in the Proust, Dostoevsky, even Balzac, class; useful to be learnt from, but not to be imitated … His obsession with himself, paying a good dividend in certain respects, was a handicap in others, narrowing the sphere of vision. As regards the novel itself, one wishes the Brothel scene was done in the same manner as the Martello Tower. I feel certain Joyce simply found himself unable to bring that off, falling back faute de mieux on ‘experimental’ methods, not because those really gave a better picture. Perhaps it might be argued this stuck closer to the Ulysses myth.
Anthony Powell, Journals 1982-1986, 20 June 1986
With thanks to Peter Kislinger
You can outsource anything you like folks, but you cannot outsource the responsibility or the liabilities.
Unknown
Terrorists want people to fear. Demagogues [eg. Trump] encourage fear. Great leaders like FDR say, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Lawrence M Krauss
It is hardest to talk about civil rights after an atrocity. To many people it feels beside the point, or even part of the problem. People are in no mood for “niceties”, for giving terrorists the liberties which they seem hell bent on destroying. These are the danger times. Human rights, civil liberties – whatever you want to call them – are designed for times like this. They are a moral check list. An insurance policy against our worst natures. Because at times like this, when the world is fearful and trust is in short supply, we need to remember that our judgement in the better times was sound … human rights have a lot to offer in this conversation. Not least because as lucid as we feel after a terrorist attack, the policy responses which emerge from the aftermath may simply be wrong.
Barrister Adam Wagner; Rights Information; 5 June 2017
Regulations (and the removal of regulations) are not ends in themselves.
A regulation is there to provide that outcomes will be (are are likely to be) different from what they would be, *but for* the regulation.
Certain bad outcomes can be avoided; certain public goods and public benefits can be achieved. In both cases, individuals would not be able to do this for themselves without the regulation.
David Allen Green at Jack of Kent blog
What, if anything, can be done to prevent further terrorist attacks in the UK? There is a dearth of sensible ideas but no shortage of suggestions from the nation’s politicians and columnists. UK prime minister Theresa May characterised last week’s atrocity as an attack on the UK’s liberal values, and suggested the nation could more expediently resolve this conflict by further abandoning those very same values.
May called for more to be done to make online communications less secure, echoing predecessor David Cameron’s sentiment that there should be no form of communication that the government cannot intercept.
While this strategy would effectively destroy the safe operation of the UK’s digital infrastructure, it does mean we can look forward to an end to religious strife, as gods of all denominations would be sidelined by an all-knowing state. At the pearly gates, British citizens could anticipate being met by a minister clutching their internet search history and a disapproving glare.
“Feedback”; New Scientist; 17 June 2017
Clothes largely cut off the experience of pleasurable sensations of the skin. Natural skin sensation, the play of air, sun, and wind upon the body, can be very pleasurable … The nudist movement almost certainly reflects the desire for more freedom of communication through the skin.
Ashley Montagu, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy, you may find in them a harness and a chain. Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your body and less of your raiment, for the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.
Khalil Gibran

Welcome to our monthly collection of quotes which have amused, interested or inspired us over recent weeks.
You bustle around tutting and narrowing your eyes, in the manner of a dog territorially pissing on a lamppost.
[Emma Beddington]
His virtues were so conspicuous that his enemies, unable to overlook them, denied them, and his friends, to whose loose lives they were a rebuke, represented them as vices. They are here commemorated by his family, who shared them.
[Ambrose Bierce, American Writer, 1842-1914]
In those rare cases where states have managed to destroy their opponents by repression, they have often destroyed also the foundations of a healthy and vital body politic, and been consumed by a destructive institutional paranoia. Rational behaviour has little to do with any of this. Reason, after all, so rarely governs politics. This is particularly the case for governments nervously fingering the hair trigger of emergency.
[Stephen Alford; The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I]
A danger to any state is the powerful and often circular logic of conspiracy. It is pronounced when fear translates into a sense or feeling of national vulnerability, something very dangerous when it is institutionalized by any government that possesses the coercive means to make its will felt. This is especially true of countries where a narrow or isolated governing elite puts its own political survival before everything else, and where the instruments of the modern state can be used to subdue opposition at home or even abroad. These elites tend to see as identical their self-interest as a governing group and the welfare of the public body. They invest in propaganda. They promote a fear or hatred of outsiders. They feel beset by their enemies. We see regimes like this governing today. All of this may have been true of Elizabethan England … certainly the Elizabethan state was busily fashioning the tools of modern government in conditions of war and emergency in Reformation Europe.
[Stephen Alford; The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I]
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
[Douglas Adams]
If you go far enough back, all our ancestors were Pagans. They practised religions that had few creeds or dogmas. There were no prophets. There were myths and legends, but no scriptures to be taken literally. These religions were based on the celebration of the seasonal cycles of nature. They were based on what people did, not what people believed.
[Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon]
Hope and wish for it otherwise as we will, there is no evidence of an external grace shining down upon us, no demonstrable destiny or purpose assigned us, no second life vouchsafed us for the end of the present one. We are, it seems, completely alone.
[EO Wilson]
[The] meaning of life … is whatever gives you joy, or consoles you when life has got you down. It is something you believe or do that makes your life worth living. And by “you” I mean not the collective you but the individual you.
[John Horgan at Scientific American blogs]
The meaning of life belongs in the category of beauty, not truth. It is an aesthetic and hence fundamentally subjective phenomenon.
[John Horgan at Scientific American blogs]
And most of the harmful consequences of beliefs stem from the insistence of believers that everyone agree with them … The notion that there is one true meaning of life is not only wrong. It may be the worst idea that humans have ever invented, in terms of how much harm it has caused.
[John Horgan at Scientific American blogs]
Het Zesde Metaal had their fourth album ‘Calais’ coming out last year and we were stunned! Even though they are singing in West-Flemish dialect, which is practically incomprehensible for the biggest part of Belgium and the rest of the world, everyone feels it, that folky music. The electronic elements on the new album are a real enrichment.
[Quoted by Emma Beddinton at Belgian Waffling]
You have only one choice when things aren’t going well: find a way to pay the bills.
[Lord Heseltine]
True love is finding that one person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
[unknown]
Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s okay. You’re here to live your life, not to make everyone understand.
[unknown]
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
[Voltaire]
We’ll sooner or later accept that politicians are, even at their best, parasites. We are the host and they will adapt or die as we change.
[Dan Harmon]
Real ale is a balanced diet as long as you have a pint (250 calories) in each hand.
[John Hein]
As long as we live in this world we are bound to encounter problems. If, at such times, we lose hope and become discouraged, we diminish our ability to face up to what challenges us. If, on the other hand, we remember that it is not just ourselves but everyone who has to undergo hardship, this more realistic perspective will increase our determination and capacity to overcome what troubles us.
[Dalai Lama]

So here we have this month’s collection of quotes …
It’s a crufty pile of ad-hocery, but it works.
[Alex Parker]
The more extremism surrounds me – of any hue, religious, political, right, left – the more I find that I react with an extremism of my own. I am becoming extremely moderate, extremely reasonable, extremely centrist, extremely keen to understand others. If there is such a thing as a fundamentalist moderate, I think I’m turning into one. For what other choice is there, as the world becomes harder and more jagged, than to allow oneself to become softer and more flexible? What other strategy, if faced with an implacable wall, than to seep in through the cracks? What other option, when confronted by inhumanity, than to become more human?
[Alex Andreou on Facebook]
This is an article in support of fairness and inclusivity … I am fully in favour of fairness. I am fully in favour of inclusivity. Fairness and inclusivity are not natural, however. They are artificial human constructs. Nature is not fair and it is not inclusive. Human beings, as a naturally occurring animal species, are not fair or inclusive unless we try very hard to be, unless we go against our natural inclinations.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/monks-depend-on-soldiers/5308]
Ripping down … public protections means freedom for billionaires and corporations from the constraints of democracy. This is what Brexit – and Donald Trump – are all about. The freedom we were promised is the freedom of the very rich to exploit us.
[George Monbiot at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/04/ripping-up-protections-brexit-trump-freedom]
If the government agrees to a “bonfire of red tape”, we would win bent bananas and newt-squashing prerogatives. On the other hand, we could lose our rights to fair employment, an enduring living world, clean air, clean water, public safety, consumer protection, functioning public services, and the other distinguishing features of civilisation. Tough choice, isn’t it?
[George Monbiot at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/04/ripping-up-protections-brexit-trump-freedom]
Whenever we hear the word freedom, we should ask ourselves, “Freedom for whom, at whose expense?”
[George Monbiot at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/04/ripping-up-protections-brexit-trump-freedom]
At last a use for children. Accessible food orderers for those wanting chips and chicken nuggets instead of posh grub.
[John Hein]
One of the ways of avoiding being beaten by the system is to laugh at it.
[Peter Cook]
If a man is born ignorant, to parents that are ignorant, in a society that is ignorant, lives a life of ignorance and eventually dies in ignorance … ignorance is a norm. So indoctrination can be called education, hypnotism can be called entertainment, criminals can be called leaders, and lies can be called truth, because his mind was never truly his own.
[unknown]
To all appearances he is a fool. His steps leave no trace.
[Chuang-tzu, The Perfect Man]
Being an arsehole is an equal opportunities business.
[Someone I didn’t note on Facebook]