Quotations

Collected by Donald Gudehus

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O

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

But the most heinous crime of the Church has been perpetrated not against churchmen but against churchgoers. With its poisonous concepts of sin and divine punishment, it's warped and brainwashed countless millions. It would be impossible to calculate the psychic damage this has inflicted on generations of children who might have grown up into healthy, happy. productive, zestful human beings but for the burden of antisexual fear and guilt ingrained in them by the Church. This alone is enough to condemn religion.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Playboy Interview (October, 1965)

Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Playboy Interview, October, 1965

Barack Hussein Obama II (August 4, 1961, Honolulu, Hawaii -), 44th President of the United States

I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart.

Barck Obama, reflecting upon his chat with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley, July 30, 2009

Obi Wan Knobi, character in Star Wars

Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Obi Wan Knobi, in a disguised reference to Los Angeles

Howard Thomas Odum (September 1, 1924, Chapel Hill, NC - September 11, 2002, Gainsesville, FL), American ecologist

Nature has all the answers, so what is your question?

Howard Odum

Keith Olbermann (January 27, 1959, NYC, NY - ), American news anchor, commentator and radio sportscaster

Get your facts straight; use the Google!

Keith Olbermann, Feb. 26, 2007 in a criticism of Condoleezza Rice's comparison of Sadam Hussein to Hitler.

Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.

Ken Olson, at the Convention of the World Future Society, Boston, 1977

Julius Robert Oppenheimer (Apr. 22, 1904, New York, NY - Feb. 18, 1967, Princeton, NJ), American theoretical physicist and science administrator

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, speaking of Albert Einstein

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, Alamogordo, New Mexico, 1945

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, in Life, October 10, 1949

Patrick Jake O'Rourke (November 14, 1947, Toledo, Ohio - ), American humorist, journalist, and political commentator

Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.

P. J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell, Picador: London, 270-271, 1989

George Orwell (June 25, 1903, Motihari, India - Jan. 21, 1950, London, England), British author

History is written by the winners.: George Orwell
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.: George Orwell
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever.: George Orwell, from Nineteen Eighty-Four
In this country, intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face ... Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and incovenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of iedas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.: George Orwell, describing the England of 1945
On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.: George Orwell, from Nineteen Eighty-Four
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.: George Orwell
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.: George Orwell
To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.: George Orwell, in the suppressed preface to Animal Farm, 1946
We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.: George Orwell, in his essay, In Front of Your Nose, 1946
Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.: George Orwell

John Oswald

If creativity is a field, then copyright is the fence.

John Oswald

James Otis (Feb. 5, 1725, West Barnstable, MA - May 23, 1778, Andover, MA), American attorney and patriot, and inspiration for the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States

No taxation without representation.

James Otis

The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property, without his consent in person, or by representation.

James Otis, in The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, 1764

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Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse

Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.

Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

Thomas Paine (Jan. 29, 1737, Thetford, England - June 8, 1809), United States founding father and political writer

Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins ... and you will have sins in abundance.

Thomas Paine

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Thomas Paine

Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses. Here is an order, attributed to 'God' to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and to debauch and rape the daughters. I would not dare so dishonor my Creator's name by (attaching) it to this filthy book (the Bible).

Thomas Paine

From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependant on His protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple?

Thomas Paine

It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead.

Thomas Paine

Of all the tyrannies that effect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.

Thomas Paine

The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.

Thomas Paine

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man that ever was propagated since man began to exist.

Thomas Paine

The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, 1794

When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.

Thomas Paine

Sara Palin (February 11, 1964, Sandpoint, ID - ), Governor of Alaska and candidate for Vice President of the United States of America

One thing that Americans do at this time also, though, is let's commit ourselves, just everyday American people Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation I think we need to band together and say, never again. Never will we exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars.

Sara Palin, during the Vice Presidential Debate, Oct. 2, 2008

Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810, Lexington, MA - May 10, 1860, Florence, Italy), American Unitarian preacher, lecturer, and writer

Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged long.

Theodore Parker

Cyril Northcote Parkinson (July 30, 1909, Barnard Castle, Durham, England - Mar. 9, 1993, Canterbury, England), English historian and author

Administrators make work for each other so that they can multiply the number of their subordinates and enhance their prestige.

C. Northcote Parkinson

Deliberative bodies become decreasingly effective after they pass five to eight members.

C. Northcote Parkinson

Expenditure rises to meet income.

C. Northcote Parkinson

The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.

C. Northcote Parkinson, in Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress, 1958

The matters most debated in a deliberative body tend to be the minor ones where everybody understands the issues.

C. Northcote Parkinson

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase "It is the busiest man who has time to spare."

C. Northcote Parkinson, in an essay for The Economist, Nov. 19, 1955

Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623, Clermont, France - Aug. 19, 1662, Paris, France), French mathematician and philosopher

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal

Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.

Blaise Pascal

George Smith Patton, Jr. (Nov. 11, 1885, San Gabriel, CA - Dec. 21, 1945, Heidelberg, Germany), Four-star General in the United States Army

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.

George S. Patton

Live for something rather than die for nothing.

George S. Patton

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

George S. Patton

Often I have encountered in life that great disappointments have proved to be the road to future successes.

George S. Patton

Perpetual peace is a futile dream.

George S. Patton

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

George S. Patton

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

George S. Patton

You're never beaten until you admit it.

George S. Patton

Wolfgang Pauli, German physicist

I don't mind you thinking slowly, but I mind you publishing faster than you think.

Wolfgang Pauli

Tom Paxton (October 31, 1937, Chicago, IL - ), American singer and songwriter

Some people you don't have to satirize, you just quote 'em.

Tom Paxton

Wendell Phillips (Nov. 29, 1811, Boston, MA - Feb. 2, 1884, Boston MA), American American abolitionist, orator, and columnist

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty-power is ever stealing from the many to the few.... The hand entrusted with power becomes ... the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.: Wendell Phillips, in speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in Boston, January 2, 1852. A similar statement was made earlier by John Curran in 1790.

Pablo Diego José Santiago Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispé Crispiniano de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisma Trinidad Ruiz Blasco y Picasso (October 25, 1881, Málaga, Spain - April 8, 1973, Mougin, France)

My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope." Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.: Pablo Picasso
Once, when a GI was visiting Pablo Picasso during the liberation of France, he said that he could not understand the artist's paintings: "Why do you paint a person looking from the side and from the front at the same time?" Picasso asked, "Do you have a girlfriend?" "Yes," replied the soldier. "Do you have a picture of her?" The soldier pulled from his wallet a photograph of the girl. Picasso looked at it in mock astonishment and asked, "Is she so small?": Pablo Picasso
We all know art is not truth. Art is a lie to make us realize the truth.": Pablo Picasso

Miss Piggy of the Muppets

Never eat more than you can lift.: Miss Piggy

Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck aka Max Planck (Apr. 23, 1858, Kiel, Germany - Oct. 4, 1947, Göttingen, Germany), German physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1918

A new truth always has to conend with many difficulties. If it were not so, it would have been discovered much sooner.

Max Planck

A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Max Planck, in Scientific Autobiography, 1949

Anybody who has been seriously engaged is scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.' It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.

Max Planck

Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.

Max Planck

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

Max Planck

We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up until now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.

Max Planck

Plato (circa 428 BC, Athens, Greece - circa 347 BC, Athens, Greece), Greek philosopher

All knowledge is but rememberance.

Plato

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Plato

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

Plato

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Plato

The productions of all arts are kinds of poetry and their craftsmen are all poets.

Plato

The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.

Plato

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

Plato

Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254, Sarsina, Umbria, Italy - c. 184 BC), Roman playwright and poet

The atom, being for all practical purposes the stable unit of the physical plane, is a constantly changing vortex of reactions.

Plautus

The gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
Who in this place set up a sun-dial,
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small portions. When I was a boy
My belly was my sun-dial; one more sure,
Truer, and more exact than any of them.
This dial told me when 'twas proper time
To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat.
But now-a-days, why, even when I have,
I can't fall-to, unless the sun give leave.
The town's so full of these confounded dials,
The greatest part of its inhabitants,
Shrunk up with hunger, creep along the streets.

Plautus, English translation by Mayal and Mayal, 1973

Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) (circa 23, Cisalpine, Gaul - Aug. 24, 79, Stabiae, Italy), Roman natural historian

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Pliny the Elder

It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to him a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.

Pliny the Elder, from Natural History, Book VII, Sect. 1

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.

Pliny the Elder

Plutarch (Mestrius Plutarchus) (circa 45, Chaeronea, Greece - circa 125), Greek historian, biographer, and essayist.

Knavery is the best defense against a knave.

Plutarch

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted.

Plutarch

Edgar Allan Poe (Jan. 19, 1809, Boston, MA - Oct. 7, 1849, Baltimore, MD), American author and poet

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

Edgar Allan Poe

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Edgar Allan Poe

Jules Henri Poincaré (Apr. 29, 1854, Nancy, Lorraine, France - July 17, 1912, Paris, France), French mathematician, scientist and author

...by natural selection our mind has adapted itself to the conditions of the external world. It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

Henri Poincaré, Science and Method

How is an error possible in mathematics? A sane mind should not be guilty of a logical fallacy, yet there are very fine minds incapable of following mathematical demonstrations. Need we add that mathematicians themselves are not infallible?

Henri Poincaré

... it may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.

Henri Poincaré

Mathematicians are born, not made.

Henri Poincaré

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
[As opposed to the quotation: Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same thing].

Henri Poincaré

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.

Henri Poincaré, La Science et l'hypothèse

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.

Henri Poincaré

Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.

Henri Poincaré

Alexander Pope (May 21, 1688, London, England - May 30, 1744, Twickenham, England), English essayist and poet

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

Alexander Pope, in An Essay on Criticism, 1711, Part II

A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.

Alexander Pope, in An Essay on Man, 1733-1734, Epistle IV, lines 247-248

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded.

Alexander Pope

An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him.

Alexander Pope

Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but impairs what it would improve.

Alexander Pope

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Alexander Pope, in An Essay on Criticism, 1711, Part III, line 66

Get your enemies to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you.

Alexander Pope

Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.

Alexander Pope, in An Essay on Man, 1733-1734, Epistle, IV, lines 193-194

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night. God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

Alexander Pope, intended epitaph for Newton

Tis education forms the common mind,
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.

Alexander Pope, in Moral Essays, 1734, Epistle I, lines 149-150

To err is human, to forgive divine.

Alexander Pope, in An Essay on Criticism, 1711, Part II, line 525

Popular Mechanics

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.

Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

Malcolm Potts

The world would be a healthier place if oral contraceptives were available in every corner store and cigarettes were limited to prescription use.

Malcolm Potts, in Scientific American, Jan., 2000

John Powell

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

John Powell

Terry Pratchett (Apr. 28, 1948, Beaconsfield, Bucks, England - ), British author

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools - the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and he summed up all three of them in his famous phrase - "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there is nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink".

Terry Pratchett, from Small Gods

I don't think I've ever been critical of the money Douglas Adams makes, especially since, as has been tactfully pointed out, I myself have had to change banks having filled the first one up.