Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Kenny · 05-01-2002, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bill Snedden:
[QB]

It rhymes in German also: "Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib and Gesang, der bleibet ein Narr sein Leben lang."

Well, I'll be darned.

Thanks!

godfry n. glad · 05-01-2002, 09:38 AM

Quote:

This is just a side question for the sake of my own curiosity.

Do you have a source for this Luther quote?

“Who loves not women, wine, and song. Remains a fool his whole life long.”

<snip>
Kenny

Kenny....

According to Barlett's _Familiar Quotations_ (15th ed., 1980), the quote above is rendered in English as "Who does not love wine, women, and song Remains a fool his whole life long," and is attributed (note: "attributed" meaning they are not sure) to Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826) and was originally "Wer nicht leibt Wein, Weib un Gesang,/Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang."

Looks to me as though it rhymed in German, as well. But it seems that the attribution to Martin Luther was misinformed.

godfry n. glad

05-01-2002, 02:54 PM

To all

I have only one:

"I saw the rich ride by in carriages, splashing mud on street cleaners in the rain, and I asked myself why these things were so."
Pedro Abad Santos

phaedrus · 05-02-2002, 06:11 AM

Nietzsche's philosphers' error

The philosopher supposes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure; but posterity finds its value in the stone which he used for building, and which is used many more times after that for building�better. Thus it finds the value in the fact that the structure can be destroyed and nevertheless retains value as building material

James Still · 05-02-2002, 07:46 AM

One of my favorite quotes:

"Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have more than you. Don't be taken in when they pat you paternally on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them, they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces."

Attributed to Jean Paul Marat (French Revolutionary 1743 - 1793)

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: James Still ]</p>

Evil Jello · 05-02-2002, 02:59 PM

Here are a couple of my favorite quotations.

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books." -Freud

“Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' The stranger is a theologian.” –Denis Diderot

"Morality in Europe today is herd animal morality - in other words, as we understand it, merely one type of human morality besides which, before which, and after which many other types, above all higher moralities, are, or ought to be, possible" –Friedrich Nietzsche

“The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.” –Bertrand Russel

“I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.” –Bertrand Russel

“Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this is illusory.” -Fred Hoyle

“Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.” –Francois Voltaire

“History aside, the almost universal opinion that one's own religious convictions are the reasoned outcome of a dispassionate evaluation of all the major alternatives is almost demonstrably false for humanity in general. If that really were the genesis of most people's convictions, then one would expect the major faiths to be distributed more or less randomly or evenly over the globe. But in fact they show a very strong tendency to cluster...which illustrates what we all suspected anyway: that social forces are the primary determinants of religious belief for people in general. To decide scientific questions by appeal to religious orthodoxy would therefore be to put social forces in place of empirical evidence.” -Paul Churchland

“The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight - that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether.” -Daniel Dennett

“What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.” - Alfred North Whitehead

“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.” -H.L. Mencken

“My only wish is. . . to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are "half animal, half angel" into persons, into whole persons.” - Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach

The last one is my favorite

05-04-2002, 06:42 PM

To all:

I lied, here's a few more:

"Friends, it has been our misfortune to welcome the white man. We have been deceived. He brought with him some shining things that pleased our eyes; he brought weapons more effective than our own. Above all he brought the spirit-water that makes one forget old age, weakness and sorrow. But I wish to say to you that if you wish to possess these things for yourselves, you must begin anew and put away the wisdom of your fathers. You must lay up food and forget the hungry. When your house is built, your storeroom filled, then look around for a neighbor whom you can take advantage of and seize all he has."
---Red Cloud

"We are told that Spotted Tail has consented to be the Beggars' Chief. Those Indians who go over to the white man can be nothing but beggars, for he respects only riches, and how can an Indian be a rich man? He cannot without ceasing to be an Indian. As for me, I have listened patiently to the promises of the Great Father, but his memory is short. I am now done with him. This is all I have to say."
---Red Cloud

“The imminent and expected destruction of the life cycle of world ecology can only be prevented by a radical shift in outlook from our present naive conception of this world as a testing ground to a more mature view of the universe as a comprehensive matrix of life forms. Making this shift in viewpoint is essentially religious, not economic or political.”
---Vine DeLoria, Jr.

"When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered most. When I became a Christian, I was able to take a more liberal view."
---C. S. Lewis

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a car."
---Laurence J. Peter

"What can you say about a society that says God is dead and Elvis is alive?"
---Irv Kupcinet

"The things that will destory us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice."
---Gandhi

"The fact that we are totally unable to imagine a form of existence without space and time by no means proves that such an existence is itself impossible."
---Carl Jung

"You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes."
---Maimonides

Kip · 05-04-2002, 08:35 PM

Quote:

My religion is to live - and die - without regret.
Milarepa

Quote:

We are all in the same cart, going to execution; how can I hate anyone or wish anyone harm?
Sir Thomas More

Quote:

Is not the life
of man upon earth all trial? Who wishes for troubles and difficulties?
Thou commandest them to be endured, not to be loved. No man loves
what he endures, though he love to endure. For though he rejoices
that he endures, he had rather there were nothing for him to endure.
In adversity I long for prosperity, in prosperity I fear adversity.
What middle place is there betwixt these two, where the life of man
is not all trial? Woe to the prosperities of the world, once and again,
through fear of adversity, and corruption of joy! Woe to the adversities
of the world, once and again, and the third time, from the longing
for prosperity, and because adversity itself is a hard thing, and
lest it shatter endurance. Is not the life of man upon earth all trial:
without any interval?
St. Augustine
Confessions

Quote:

"When we start considering this possibility, we come upon a contention which
is so astonishing that we must dwell upon it. This contention holds that
what we call our civilization is largely responsible for our misery, and
that we should be much happier if we gave it up and returned to primitive
conditions."
Freud
Civilization & Its Discontents

Quote:

What I am suggesting, in the end, is that evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.
Wilson
On Human Nature

Quote:

"It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
Krishnamurti

Quote:

"In order to elucidate especially and most clearly the origination of this error, so important for our topic, and so to complete the investigation of the self-consciousness undertaken in the preceding section, let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himsel: "It is six o'clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to the see the sun set; I can go to the theatre; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife." This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: "I can make a high wave (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as a stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain termperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond."
Schoepenhauer
On The Freedom Of The Will

Quote:

"An old legend has it that King Midas hunted a long tim ein the woods for
the wise Silenus, companion of Dionysos, without being able to catch him.
When he had finally caught him the king asked what he considered man's
greatest good. The daemon remained sullen and uncommunicative until
finally, forced by the kind, he broke into a shrill laugh and spoke:
"Ephemeral wretch, begotten by accident and toil, why do you force me to
tell you what it would be your greatest boon not to hear? What would be
best for you is quite beyond your reach: not have been born, not be, to be
nothing. But the second best is to die soon."
Nietzsche
The Birth of Tragedy

Quote:

"'Was that- life?' will I say to death. 'Well! Once more!'"
Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

And my favorite:

Quote:

"Our great war is a spiritual war."
Tyler Durden

[ May 04, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]

[ May 04, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]</p>

Evil Jello · 05-05-2002, 06:15 AM

"I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived -- an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; or they're slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars
and clothes, working jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need. We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place.
We have no great war, or great depression. The great war is a
spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by
television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock
stars -- but we won't. And we're learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed-off."

-Tyler Durden

This movie is sooooo good

wordsmyth · 05-05-2002, 08:08 AM

Here are a few of my favorite quotes...

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
- Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means."
- Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.

"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

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05-01-2002, 02:54 PM	#53
Paul5204 Guest Posts: n/a	To all I have only one: "I saw the rich ride by in carriages, splashing mud on street cleaners in the rain, and I asked myself why these things were so." Pedro Abad Santos

05-02-2002, 06:11 AM	#54
phaedrus Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Indus Posts: 1,038	Nietzsche's philosphers' error The philosopher supposes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure; but posterity finds its value in the stone which he used for building, and which is used many more times after that for building�better. Thus it finds the value in the fact that the structure can be destroyed and nevertheless retains value as building material

05-02-2002, 07:46 AM	#55
James Still Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Pacific Northwest (US) Posts: 527	One of my favorite quotes: "Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have more than you. Don't be taken in when they pat you paternally on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them, they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces." Attributed to Jean Paul Marat (French Revolutionary 1743 - 1793) [ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: James Still ]</p>

05-02-2002, 02:59 PM	#56
Evil Jello Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Gatineau Canada Posts: 18	Here are a couple of my favorite quotations. "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." -Friedrich Nietzsche "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books." -Freud “Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' The stranger is a theologian.” –Denis Diderot "Morality in Europe today is herd animal morality - in other words, as we understand it, merely one type of human morality besides which, before which, and after which many other types, above all higher moralities, are, or ought to be, possible" –Friedrich Nietzsche “The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.” –Bertrand Russel “I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.” –Bertrand Russel “Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this is illusory.” -Fred Hoyle “Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.” –Francois Voltaire “History aside, the almost universal opinion that one's own religious convictions are the reasoned outcome of a dispassionate evaluation of all the major alternatives is almost demonstrably false for humanity in general. If that really were the genesis of most people's convictions, then one would expect the major faiths to be distributed more or less randomly or evenly over the globe. But in fact they show a very strong tendency to cluster...which illustrates what we all suspected anyway: that social forces are the primary determinants of religious belief for people in general. To decide scientific questions by appeal to religious orthodoxy would therefore be to put social forces in place of empirical evidence.” -Paul Churchland “The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight - that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether.” -Daniel Dennett “What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.” - Alfred North Whitehead “Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.” -H.L. Mencken “My only wish is. . . to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are "half animal, half angel" into persons, into whole persons.” - Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach The last one is my favorite

05-04-2002, 06:42 PM	#57
Paul5204 Guest Posts: n/a	To all: I lied, here's a few more: "Friends, it has been our misfortune to welcome the white man. We have been deceived. He brought with him some shining things that pleased our eyes; he brought weapons more effective than our own. Above all he brought the spirit-water that makes one forget old age, weakness and sorrow. But I wish to say to you that if you wish to possess these things for yourselves, you must begin anew and put away the wisdom of your fathers. You must lay up food and forget the hungry. When your house is built, your storeroom filled, then look around for a neighbor whom you can take advantage of and seize all he has." ---Red Cloud "We are told that Spotted Tail has consented to be the Beggars' Chief. Those Indians who go over to the white man can be nothing but beggars, for he respects only riches, and how can an Indian be a rich man? He cannot without ceasing to be an Indian. As for me, I have listened patiently to the promises of the Great Father, but his memory is short. I am now done with him. This is all I have to say." ---Red Cloud “The imminent and expected destruction of the life cycle of world ecology can only be prevented by a radical shift in outlook from our present naive conception of this world as a testing ground to a more mature view of the universe as a comprehensive matrix of life forms. Making this shift in viewpoint is essentially religious, not economic or political.” ---Vine DeLoria, Jr. "When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered most. When I became a Christian, I was able to take a more liberal view." ---C. S. Lewis "Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a car." ---Laurence J. Peter "What can you say about a society that says God is dead and Elvis is alive?" ---Irv Kupcinet "The things that will destory us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice." ---Gandhi "The fact that we are totally unable to imagine a form of existence without space and time by no means proves that such an existence is itself impossible." ---Carl Jung "You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes." ---Maimonides

05-05-2002, 06:15 AM	#59
Evil Jello Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Gatineau Canada Posts: 18	"I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived -- an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; or they're slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need. We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed-off." -Tyler Durden This movie is sooooo good

05-05-2002, 08:08 AM	#60
wordsmyth Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Des Moines, Ia. U.S.A. Posts: 521	Here are a few of my favorite quotes... "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930) "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) "I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means." - Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925. "Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis." - Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God. Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish. Mark Twain (1835-1910)

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