And for the final time this year, here’s our monthly round-up of quotes interesting and amusing.

The philosopher Diogenes (c.412-323 BCE) was described by Plato as “a Socrates gone mad”. He lived in a barrel & believed man must embrace nature & reject shame. He openly masturbated in public, saying “If only it were so easy to soothe hunger by rubbing an empty belly”.
[@WhoresofYore on Twitter]

The two greatest defences against infectious diseases are:
1. Clean water
2. Vaccines – the the single most life-saving medical innovation in the history of medicine.
[Prof. Alice Roberts]

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.
[Robert M Pirsig]

Each person has come into manifestation for a certain purpose and that purpose will be accomplished whether he considers himself to be the actor or not.
[Ramana Maharshi]

The present is no more a real feature of the world than the deliciousness of haggis. It is just a feature of how we experience time.
[Will Bynoe; Logic and Monsters]

A corollary of “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is that actually coaxing that technology into functioning properly is indistinguishable from spell-casting.
[Katie Mack, @AstroKatie on Twitter]

My standard response to tech complaints is “have you painted yourself blue & turned 3x widdershins while saying an incantation?” Response “No” of course. Me: “Then you haven’t tried *everything*.”
[@WTEDyke on Twitter]

The eminent seat of delectation in women when they engage in venery.
[16th-century Italian anatomist Realdo Colombo on the clitoris]

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
[Carl Sagan]

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone 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]

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.
[George Carlin]

In the past 10,000 years, humans have devised roughly 100,000 religions based on roughly 2,500 gods. So the only difference between myself and the believers is that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We’re only one God away from total agreement.
[Michael Shermer]

Sex at 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.
[George Burns]

Stars, too, were time travellers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries – but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.
[Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children]