QOTD

“The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done”

-George Carlin

“A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.”

-Arthur C. Clarke

QOTD

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

–Dwight D. Eisenhower

QOTD

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”

– George Bernard Shaw

Why Fund Basic Research?

The true power of things like abstract math and experimental science is not that it enables to invent things which we have conceived of but do not have, it is that it enables us to conceive of entirely new things which previously did not even exist in imagination.

Read the whole thing by 0xFCAF on Metafilter

QOTD

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

–Thomas Paine

QOTD

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

–Louis D. Brandeis

QOTD

“Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.

If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

–Bertrand Russell

(In honor of adding Russell’s Teapot to my blogroll. These are some of my favorite strips).

QOTD

“A knowledge of the true age of the earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do. And if some of the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest of it be accepted automatically?”

–Francis Crick

QOTD

“Society bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities. If I say something offensive to religious people, I’ll be universally censured, including by many atheists. But if I say something insulting about Democrats or Republicans or the Green Party, one is allowed to get away with that. Hiding behind the smoke screen of untouchability is something religions have been allowed to get away with for too long.”

–Richard Dawkins

QOTD

Upon telling Heather that I haven’t shaved in a while:

A WEEK! But Chris, you grow hair like . . . something that grows hair a lot!

Understanding Engineers

An engineer describing something as “non-trivial” means roughly the following:

It means impossible. Since no engineer is going to admit something is impossible, they use this word instead. When an engineer says something is “non-trivial,” it’s the equivalent of an airline pilot calmly telling you that you might encounter “just a bit of turbulence” as he flies you into a cat 5 hurricane.

July 17th, 2007  •   Comments Off  •   Tags: quotes, tech  •