Them - Quotes
Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.
No one can ever prepare you for what happens when you have a child. When you see the baby in your arms and you know that it`s your job now. No one can prepare you for the love and the fear. No one can prepare you for the love people you love can feel for them. And nothing can prepare you for the indifference of friends who don`t have babies.
We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year`s Day.
Don`t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.
Always be nice to people whatever how bad they are to you. to show them that you are not like them.
I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing Santa Claus. It will prepare them for an adulthood of believing in God.
Never fear spoiling children by making them too happy. Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow.
If the omniscient author of nature knew that the study of his works tends to make men disbelieve his Being or Attributes, he would not have given them so many invitations to study and contemplate Nature.
This idea that belief without evidence is a virtue... it doesn`t just inspire people to trust their religious leaders blindly. It inspires people to trust anybody blindly. Including people who are trying to rob them blind.
I`m angry that when people run for political office in the United States, it`s considered legitimate to grill them about their employment background, their positions on legislation, their positions on social issues, the taxes they`ve paid [...]... but it`s considered invasive and intolerant to ask if they believe in talking snakes, demonic possession, magic underwear, magic crackers that turn into the flesh of their god, an Earth that was created 6,000 years ago, or a god who put himself on Earth in human form and then sacrificed himself to himself to atone for sins that other people committed and to save humanity from the punishment he himself was planning to dole out. If someone is going to make decisions about science funding, emerging medical technology, our educational system, and so on... I think it matters if they believe any of that shit, and I bloody well want to know about it.
When people are taught to let go of difficult questions and trust whatever religious authorities tell them? That it`s better to trust their feelings than their critical thinking skills? That evidence and reason are less important than faith? That "doubter" is a synonym for "sinner"? They become vulnerable to every cheater, chiseler, swindler, con artist, and late night infomercial huckster who` s lucky enough to cross their gullible paths.
When you look at the history of what we know about the world, you see a noticeable pattern. Natural explanations of things have been replacing supernatural explanations of them. Like a steamroller. Why the Sun rises and sets. Where thunder and lightning come from. Why people get sick. Why people look like their parents. How the complexity of life came into being. I could go on and on. All these things were once explained by religion. But as we understood the world better, and learned to observe it more carefully, the explanations based on religion were replaced by ones based on physical cause and effect. Consistently. Thoroughly. Like a steamroller.