Yule Blessings

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.

-- Richard Curtis

Missionaria Protectiva

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teachings of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. you can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known.

-- Frank Herbert

On the Wall of the NYC Natural History Museum

Treat the world well. It was not given to you by your parents. It has been loaned to you by your grandchildren.


-- Kenyan Proverb

Freedom FROM Religion

Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won't do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make spectacular claims upon your attention.

- Sam Harris
The End of Faith p.215
ISBN 978-0-393-32765-6

The Free Play of Signs and Signifiers

Language can be compared with a sheet of paper: thought is the front and the sound the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time; likewise in language, one can neither divide sound from thought nor thought from sound; the division could be accomplished only abstracedly [sic], and the result would be either pure psychology pr pure phonology.

- Ferdinand de Saussure

Popularizer is an Evil Word.

Science is as resolutely personal an enterprise as art, even if the chief prize be truth rather than beauty (though artists also seek truth, and good science is profoundly beautiful).

-- Stephen Jay Gould.

Never Heard of Laurels

The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one's self: "The work is done." But just as one says that, the answer comes: "The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains." The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be, while you still live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in living.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The Three Laws are Absolute

The question of whether Machines Can Think...is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.

- Edsger Dijkstra

Secrets to Success

For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.

- Ethel Barrymore

Remember, Creationism is Only a Theory and They All Have to Go to Heaven One Day.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

- Max Planck

Proud and Insolent Youth.

Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy.

-James M. Barrie

Land Where my Fathers Died

America has been called a melting pot, but it seems better to call it a mosaic, for in it each nation, people, or race which has come to its shores has been privileged to keep its individuality, contributing at the same time its share to the unified patter of a new nation.

- King Baudouin I of Belgium



Actually, my father is an immigrant.

- Tom

The Mouse Shape on the Second Moon

You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, education and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.


- Frank Herbert

Jubal's Wisdom

Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing.

One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible result.

Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours, longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.

- Robert A. Heinlein