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Post some of your favorite quotations that you deem to be profound. Here's one of my favorite quotations that I deem to be profound:
"We now realize that we know nothing of the intrinsic quality of physical phenomena except when they happen to be sensations, and therefore there is no reason to be surprised that some are sensations, or to suppose that the others are totally unlike sensations. The gap between mind and matter has been filled in, partly by new views on the mind, but much more by the realization that physics tells us nothing as to the intrinsic character of matter." - Bertrand Russell
"Our minds are the subjective experiences of our having objective brains." -- Dr. J. Allan Hobson, sleep and dream researcher
"Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament of the other." (Thomas Paine,
The Age of Reason, 1794)

(11-03-2018, 01:13 PM)Thoreauvian Wrote: [ -> ]"Our minds are the subjective experiences of our having objective brains." -- Dr. J. Allan Hobson, sleep and dream researcher
Very true!
"The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up on the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure... you are above everything distressing." - Spinoza
"Rub her feet."
Lazarus Long
The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
-Robert Pirsig
"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!'
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?' would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life
to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?" - Nietszche, Aphorism 341, "The Greatest Weight"

"My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it." - Nietszche, "Why I am So Clever", Ecce Homo
I have been routinely accused of being cynical by people who ironically understand morality in the most cynical possible way. In keeping with my cynical character, my favorite quote is "Polly wants a cracker."
Two from Frank Herbert:
"What senses do we lack that we do not perceive entire worlds around us?"
... and:
"Those who see only what they wish are doomed to rot in the stink of their own perceptions."
Then there's Mark Twain:
"Never argue with an idiot. He'll pull you down to his level, and then beat you with experience."
“Catholicism cannot be reconciled with naturalism or rationalism.” (Pope Leo XIII)
Indeed! Something I observed when I was still in grade school.

(11-05-2018, 04:04 PM)Yonadav Wrote: [ -> ]I have been routinely accused of being cynical by people who ironically understand morality in the most cynical possible way. In keeping with my cynical character, my favorite quote is "Polly wants a cracker."
That reads like you are a parrot with no original or novel ideas of your own.
(11-06-2018, 02:27 AM)GirlyMan Wrote: [ -> ] (11-05-2018, 04:04 PM)Yonadav Wrote: [ -> ]I have been routinely accused of being cynical by people who ironically understand morality in the most cynical possible way. In keeping with my cynical character, my favorite quote is "Polly wants a cracker."
That reads like you are a parrot with no original or novel ideas of your own.
Polly is flourishing, Girly.
"Buk-buk, buk buggawk!"
Gleepy the Hen
(11-04-2018, 03:28 AM)Chas Wrote: [ -> ]The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
-Robert Pirsig
Zo, climbing mountains is a Zen
and a shame.
Varlam Shalamov: “There is a much that a man should not see, should not know, and if he should see it, it is better for him to die".
Vasily Grossman: "Man and fascism cannot co-exist. If fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people".
Karl Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and a soul of souless conditions. It is the opium of the people" .
“Nine ships there were: four for Elendil, and for Isildur three, and for Anárion two; and they fled before the black gale out of the twilight of doom into the darkness of the world. And the deeps rose beneath them in towering anger, and the waves like unto the mountains moving with great caps of writhen snow bore them up amid the wreckage of the clouds, and after many days cast them away upon the shores of Middle Earth.
“And Erú spake, saying: ‘Behold! These lands are forever yours from the white shores of the sea isles and coastal regions to the green forests, fair plains and valleys, and great mountain ranges.’
“And, thus, did Elendil stand upon the sandy beach of the new land and proclaim: ‘Out of the Great Sea to Middle Earth I have come. Here I shall dwell, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world.’” (The Silmarillion: Akallabêth: 75-77)

‘No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character.’ ~ William Kingdon Clifford
Believing without evidence is always morally wrong & The Ethics of Belief (1877)
It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
-or-
In the face of hopelessness and discontent, it is more worthwhile to do some good, however small, in response than to complain about the situation.
(11-03-2018, 01:53 PM)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: [ -> ]"Rub her feet."
Lazarus Long
I would if she'd let me.
(11-04-2018, 08:34 PM)GirlyMan Wrote: [ -> ]"My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it." - Nietszche, "Why I am So Clever", Ecce Homo
I absolutely prefer this quote to the previous one.
This one is definitely very profound.
And a fun quote to truly
follow and live up to.
(11-06-2018, 12:42 AM)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: [ -> ]Then there's Mark Twain:
"Never argue with an idiot. He'll pull you down to his level, and then beat you with experience."
Someone has actually Graphiti-ed this quote on one of the garbage bins in my neighborhood, believe it or not.
"It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other hand, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument—their intellect—which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously." - Galen Strawson
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