Skeptics Society Quotes

We want to be open-minded enough to accept radial new ideas when they occasionally come along, but we don't want to be so open-minded that our brains fall out. ~ Michael Shermer

Even though the Bible is an ancient document, every person in every situation in every society that's ever existed can find in this book things that endure forever. Here's a book that never needs another edition. It never needs to be edited, never has to be updated, is never out of date or obsolete. It speaks to us as pointedly and directly as it ever has to anyone in any century since it was written. It's so pure that it lasts forever. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

No one was quite sure how to treat this mourning that wasn't for a death. ~ M.L. Stedman

As children get older, this incidental outdoor activity
say, while waiting to be called to eat
becomes less bumptious, physically and entails more loitering with others, sizing people up, flirting, talking, pushing, shoving and horseplay. Adolescents are always being criticized for this kind of loitering, but they can hardly grow up without it. The trouble comes when it is done not within society, but as a form of outlaw life.
The requisite for any of these varieties of incidental play is not pretentious equipment of any sort, but rather space at an immediately convenient and interesting place. The play gets crowded out if sidewalks are too narrow relative to the total demands put on them. It is especially crowded out if the sidewalks also lack minor irregularities in building line. An immense amount of both loitering and play goes on in shallow sidewalk niches out of the line of moving pedestrian feet. ~ Jane Jacobs

My theory is that literature is essential to society in the way that dreams are essential to our lives. We can't live without dreaming - as we can't live without sleep. We are 'conscious' beings for only a limited period of time, then we sink back into sleep - the 'unconscious.' It is nourishing, in ways we can't fully understand. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Twice damned, in truth, and yet by quirk of timing and fate accepted into that society denied to so many others. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society , from politics , from history , for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt , which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances. ~ Jacques Ellul

You have a chance to save lives! If you don't take it, you may regret it! ~ Widad Akreyi

It must be something voluntary, something self induced - like getting drunk, or talking yourself into believing some piece of foolishness because it happens to be in the Scriptures. And then look at their idea of what's normal. Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to society. It's unimaginable! No question about what you do with your orgasms. No question about the quality of your feelings and thoughts and perceptions. And then what about the society you're supposed to be adjusted to? Is it a mad society or a sane one? And even if it's pretty sane, is it right that anybody should be completely adjusted to it? ~ Aldous Huxley

The desire to transcend one's own ego boundaries, to share completely, even for a moment, the consciousness of another person must be a universal longing. It motivates many of our activities from taking drugs to making love, and lies behind the search for new ways of getting close to one another that is so intense in our society today. ~ Andrew Weil

But we understand our liberty in a more positive sense as well, in the idea of opportunity and the subsidiary values that help realize opportunity - all those homespun virtues that Benjamin Franklin first popularized in Poor Richard's Almanack and that have continued to inspire our allegiance through successive generations. The values of self-reliance and self-improvement and risk-taking. The values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hard work. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.
These values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will - a confidence that through pluck and sweat and smarts, each of us can rise above the circumstances of our birth. But these values also express a broader confidence that so long as individual men and women are free to pursue their own interests, society as a whole will prosper. ~ Barack Obama

A just society would be one in which liberty for one person is constrained only by the demands created by equal liberty for
another. Such a society requires as a precondition an agreement excluding tools that by their very nature prevent such liberty.
This is true for tools that are fundamentally purely social arrangements, such as the school system, as well as for tools that are
physical machines. In a convivial society compulsory and open-ended schooling would have to be excluded for the sake of
justice. Age-specific, compulsory competition on an unending ladder for lifelong privileges cannot increase equality but must
favor those who start earlier, or who are healthier, or who are better equipped outside the classroom. Inevitably, it organizes
society into many layers of failure, with each layer inhabited by dropouts schooled to believe that those who have consumed
more education deserve more privilege because they are more valuable assets to society as a whole. A society constructed so
that education by means of schools is a necessity for its functioning cannot be a just society. Power tools having certain
Tools for Conviviality
Page 18 Document developed using Purplestructural characteristics are inevitably manipulative and must also be eliminated for the sake of justice. In a modern society,
energy inputs represent one of the major new liberties. Each man's ability to produce change depends on his ability to control ~ Ivan Illich

Culture is the heartbeat of the organization and our society. ~ Pearl Zhu

The work of democratic government is routinely concerned with matters defined as troubles. In "The Presidency and the Press" I make the point, familiar to anyone who has flown about the world much, that the best quick test of the political nature of a regime is to read the local papers on arrival. If they are filled with bad news, you have landed in a libertarian society of some sort. If, on the other hand, the press is filled with good news, it is a fair bet that the jails will be filled with good men. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload h ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have spoken of analogy as a constructive method. This, however, should be used only for suggestion, for it is most dangerous. Often we use an analogy and are quite unaware of it. Thus many social and political thinkers have called society an "organism," and have proceeded to deal with it as if it were a large animal. They have thought not in terms of the actual phenomena under consideration, but in terms of the analogy. In so far as the terms of the analogy were more concrete than those of the phenomena, their thinking has been made easier. But no analogy will ever hold good throughout, and consequently these thinkers have often fallen into error. ~ Henry Hazlitt

The basic function of law is to restrain (Rom. 13:1-4) not to regenerate, and when the function of the law is changed from the restraint of evil to the regeneration of man and society, then law itself begins to break down, because an impossible burden is being placed upon it ... Only as we return to a Biblical foundation for law shall we again have a return to justice and order under law. ~ Rousas John Rushdoony

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich
that is the democracy of capitalist society. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Dallas was a Black and White society at that time; it didn't have the diversity it has now. ~ Eddie Bernice Johnson

The transfer society is forever testing the bounds of patience of taxpayers. Having reached the limit and still facing loud demands for more benefits, it resorts to deficit financing. ~ Hans F. Sennholz

I did a lot of reading. I read about democratic socialism. And I read about the efforts of people for such a long time trying to create a society in which all people can live with dignity. And that's kind of what I believe. ~ Bernie Sanders

All forms of destructions all around us. Destruction in values, destruction in people, destruction in faith, destruction in elders, destruction in the pulpit, destruction in the youth, destruction in government, destruction in society etc. ~ Sunday Adelaja

I say no to people who prioritize being cool over being good. I say no to misogynists who want to weaponize my body against me. I say no to men who feel entitled to my attention and reverence, who treat everything the light touches as a resource for them to burn. I say no to religious zealots who insist that I am less important than an embryo. I say no to my own instinct to stay quiet. It's a way of kicking down the boundaries that society has set up for women - be compliant, be a caregiver, be quiet - and erecting my own. I will do this; I will not do that. You believe in my subjugation; I don't have to be nice to you. I am busy. My time is not a public commodity. ~ Lindy West

Popularity gives you power only over people who care about being popular. Ostracism gives you power only over those who fear being ostracized. ~ Robin Wasserman

Do not, under any circumstances, put this book down and turn on the teevee.
The teevee debilitates our culture. ~ Inga Muscio

It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersection, no fish, and no ducks. OK?
(Getting Control of the Frontier, Gainsville Sun, March 22, 1995) ~ Molly Ivins

I fell silent after that. I didn't want to talk about such things anymore, at least today. My chest already hurt and I was trying to keep my mind calm. I didn't want to think of a future so bleak and dark. I had plans for my future and they didn't involve the world ending or society collapsing. ~ J.M. Northup

As well as Japanese animation, technology has a huge influence on Japanese society, and also Japanese novels. It's because before, people tended to think that ideology or religion were the things that actually changed people, but it's been proven that that's not the case. Technology has been proven to be the thing that's actually changing people. So in that sense, it's become a theme in Japanese culture. ~ Mamoru Oshii

Over the last 25 years, the major popular movements that have had significant impact on the general society and have changed it, that have had a major civilizing effect – the feminist movement, the environmental movement, and so on – these are mostly developments of the '70s and '80s. Their roots might be in the activism of the '60s, but the movements themselves developed and extended later. The same is true of the changes in respect for other cultures, rights of oppressed people, and so on. These are quite significant changes. If you compare the United States now to what it was, say, 35 years ago, the changes are quite dramatic. These are changes in popular consciousness that are quite deeply embedded. ~ Noam Chomsky

According to the prevailing notion, freedom manifests as "preference-satisfying behavior." About the preferences themselves we are to maintain a principled silence, out of deference to the autonomy of the individual. They are said to express the authentic core of the self, and are for that reason unavailable for rational scrutiny. But this logic would seem to break down when our preferences are the object of massive social engineering, conducted not by government "nudgers" but by those who want to monetize our attention. ~ Matthew B. Crawford

Nevertheless, if we contemplate a society with a somewhat stable wage-unit, with national characteristics which determine the propensity to consume and the preference for liquidity, and with a monetary system which rigidly links the quantity of money to the stock of the precious metals, it will be essential for the maintenance of prosperity that the authorities should pay close attention to the state of the balance of trade. For a favourable balance, provided it is not too large, will prove extremely stimulating; whilst an unfavourable balance may soon produce a state of persistent depression. ~ John Maynard Keynes

The conspiracy theory of society . . . comes from abandoning God and then asking: "Who is in his place?" - Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, London, Routledge, ~ Umberto Eco

Sometimes I think Earth has got to be the insane asylum of the universe. . . and I'm here by computer error. At sixty-eight, I hope I've gained some wisdom in the past fourteen lustrums and it's obligatory to speak plain and true about the conclusions I've come to; now that I have been educated to believe by such mentors as Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Pohl, (S. Fowler) Wright, Orwell, Taine, Temple, Gernsback, Campbell and other seminal influences in scientifiction, I regret the lack of any female writers but only Radclyffe Hall opened my eyes outside sci-fi.

I was a secular humanist before I knew the term. I have not believed in God since childhood's end. I believe a belief in any deity is adolescent, shameful and dangerous. How would you feel, surrounded by billions of human beings taking Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and the stork seriously, and capable of shaming, maiming or murdering in their name? I am embarrassed to live in a world retaining any faith in church, prayer or a celestial creator. I do not believe in Heaven, Hell or a Hereafter; in angels, demons, ghosts, goblins, the Devil, vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, warlocks, UFOs or other delusions; and in very few mundane individuals--politicians, lawyers, judges, priests, militarists, censors and just plain people. I respect the individual's right to abortion, suicide and euthanasia. I support birth control. I wish to Good that society were rid of smoking, drinking ~ Forrest J. Ackerman

The magic of America is that we're a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom. ~ Madeleine Albright

Having spent almost two decades setting up and running Fortis, our mission of saving and enriching lives is an integral part of my being. Over time, this has inspired me to do more direct service and give back to society a little of what I have received in abundance. ~ Shivinder Mohan Singh

When two strangers in a tribal society want to trade, they will often establish trust by appealing to a common god, mythical ancestor or totem animal. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

There are friendships to one who lives in society; thus our present grief arises from having friendships; observing the evils resulting from friendship, let one walk alone like a rhinoceros. ~ Gautama Buddha