Here’s this month’s selection of recently encountered quotes.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. Without religion, everything would be permitted.
[Napoleon Bonaparte]

Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there and finding it.
[Oscar Wilde]

He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.
[Chinese Proverb]

Be careful. When a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health.
[Albert Camus]

Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to.
[DH Lawrence]

First, they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent.
[Bertrand Russell]

You can view life as a comedy or a tragedy, but … Socrates thought there’s a third possibility. That is, you can refute things. You can investigate them, never settle on an answer. There’s an inquisitive mode of living, in which you’re living your life at the same time as not assuming you know how to live it.
[Prof. Agnes Callard]

I’m not answering your question, but I’m telling you how difficult a “why” question is. You have to know what it is that you’re permitted to understand and allow to be understood and know, and what it is you’re not.
[Richard Feynman]

Had it with these
dollar store philosophers
selling me
someone else’s advise
and a makeup tutorial
I want a freak flag and
a peace pipe
and a revolution I can
feel in my hips
[JK Kennedy]

If all religious knowledge and texts disappeared, new religions would eventually form, but they’d be different from what we have now.
If all scientific knowledge and texts were lost, it would come back the same, because we’d still be rediscovering the same reality.
[unknown]

No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.
[Mark Twain]