Here’s this month’s collection of amusing and thought-provoking quotes …
[T]he most obvious, and most sensible conclusion is that there is no meaning to anything, no purpose for anything, no salvation, no nothing. This isn’t at all emotionally pleasing. And so, the materialists say, we want to and reject that reality in favour of more pleasing alternative explanations based in superstition and wishful thinking. The reason for religion, then, is as a coping mechanism, to deal with how brutally pointless everything actually is when we’re honest about it.
[Brad Warner; http://hardcorezen.info/the-meaning-of-life/6481]
Science is, after all, the deep study of sensory experience. It measures sensory experiences, compares them to other sensory experiences that have been had by other human beings. It correlates the sensory experiences of many humans and says that if many humans report more-or-less the same sensory experience, that sensory experience must therefore be real. But it does all of this in one slice of reality, the realm of sensory experience.
[Brad Warner; http://hardcorezen.info/the-meaning-of-life/6481]
“Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science” [James Clerk Maxwell] … And so this is the kind of ignorance that I’m talking about, not the common usage of the word “ignorance”, not stupidity or wilful indifference to fact or logic – you know who I’m talking about. But rather this thoroughly conscious kind of ignorance that can be developed … The big question for me really is we’ve gained some knowledge, what does one do with that knowledge? And the purpose of that knowledge in my opinion is to create better ignorance, if you will. Because there’s low-quality ignorance and high-quality ignorance … science, in my opinion, is the search for better ignorance.
[Stuart Firestein]
Life is full of internal dramas, instantaneous and sensational, played to an audience of one.
[Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly’s]
Earth water fire and air
Met together in a garden fair
Put in a basket bound with skin
If you answer this riddle
You’ll never begin.
[Incredible String Band]
There are two things, to be and to do. Don’t think too much about to do – to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. To be happiness. And then to do joy, to do happiness – on the basis of being.
[Thich Nhat Hanh]
I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog that growls every morning, a parrot that swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.
[Marie Corelli (1855-1924)]
St Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
[Bertrand Russell]
Under this window in stormy weather
I marry this man and woman together;
Let none but Him who rules the thunder
Put this man and woman asunder.
[Jonathan Swift]
When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
[Robert M Pirsig]
Teenagers are how they are because it was evolutionarily useful. Long term, sticking to the safe and familiar can lead to stagnation and extinction. Having individuals strike out on their own can refresh the gene pool and uncover useful information. Hence, teens reject authority, crave independence, take risks and so on. Far from being a constant annoyance, teenagers may be the reason humanity is as smart and successful as it is.
[Dean Burnett; New Scientist, 14 September 2019]
Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn’t, they don’t certainly know that, although you probably wouldn’t, there is no probability that you certainly would.
[Yes Minister]
L-R: Victor (Best Man), Maeve (Chief L-in-W), me, Noreen, Meg (L-in-W), Jilly (L-in-W)
For our purposes the definition of counting includes things which either come in groups of [Number] (eg. four suits in a pack of playing cards) or things which count in [Number] (eg. decimal coinage counting in tens).