"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do
because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
-- Susan B. Anthony
"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction
of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not
advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion?
To make half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing
as much as possible."
-- Frank Herbert: Chapter House Dune
"Most films make the unspoken assumption that their characters are
defined by and limited to their plots. But lives are not about stories.
Stories are about lives. That is the difference between films for
children and films for adults."
-- Roger Ebert
"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
--George Bernard Shaw
"Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but
that's not why we do it."
-- Richard Feynman
"And there are some people who say that, 'We believe in The One and
Only God and the Last Day,' but they are not believers at all. They desire to
deceive The One and Only God and those who believe. They deceive only themselves,
and they do not perceive."
-- The Qur'an: Baqarah 8,9
"Reason is so unreasonable, that few people can say they are in possession
of it."
-- Lord Byron
"The serious study of popular, contemporary, familiar texts -- as
opposed to those old enough or obscure enough to be recognized as properly 'academic'
-- is evidently still regarded as contradiction in terms by the mass media."
--Will Brooker
". . . once a woman appreciates the extent to which culture and civilization
have been male-dominated, two roads lie before her. She can learn what can be
learned about women's past achievements, and learn as well the reasons that
their contributions to the larger enterprise were not greater; and she can then
avail herself of the freedom she now has to accept the challenge to join with
men on equal terms in making of a new and richer culture. Or she can react to
the cultural and scientific heritage as 'androcentric' and move consciously
to reconstruct the 'knowledge base.' It is at this juncture that equity [feminist
academics] and gender feminist academics begin to go their separate ways."
--Christina Hoff Sommers
"[Modern 'horror' films] seem content to tickle that mammalian bio-survival
circuit: OhmyGod OhmyGod don't open that door don't open it RUN RUN AAIIIIEEE....
This is, by the way, the appropriate category for our modern 'master of horror,'
the inescapable Stephen King, a storyteller of undeniable talent who can't seem
to think of anything more frightening than being torn into little teeny pieces
. . . There's more genuine horror in any four pages of M. R. James than in one
of King's three-pounders."
-- Bruce Lanier Wright
"The willingness to accept a director's vision, even if it's not your
own, is the sign of a moviegoer who has advanced from passive, childlike consumerism
into a more advanced understanding of cinema."
--Roger Ebert
"To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly
counteracts the depressing revelations of truth."
--H.P. Lovecraft
"Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
drivel; 'Star Trek' can turn your brains to purée of bat guano; and the
greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you
all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"
--Harlan Ellison