Famous Quotes & Sayings

Lars Trier

I also wanted t do a film with a religious motif, a film about miracles. At the same time, I wanted to do a completely naturalistic film.

Rob Sheffield

Madonna was so flamboyant in terms of her look, her style, her public pronouncements, her religious taboo-smashing.

Richard Dawkins

If you are religious at all, it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false (knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan), you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.

Richard Dawkins

I think there in a great deal to be said for religious education in the sense of teaching about religion and biblical literacy. Both those things, by the way, I suspect will prepare a child to give up religion. If you are taught comparative religion, you are more likely to realise that there are other religions than the one you have been brought up in. And if you are if you are taught to read the bible, I can think of almost nothing more calculated to turn you off religion.

Richard Dawkins

Are science and religion converging? No. There are modern scientists whose words sound religious but whose beliefs, on close examination, turn out to be identical to those of other scientists who straightforwardly call themselves atheists.

Richard Whately

A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.

Russell Crowe

I never looked at Noah as an animal collector. I always thought of him as an apocalyptic character. I read everything I found about it and was surprised to find that in all religions there is the story of the flood, and that one "hero" saved the world. This proved that Noah and his Ark - were not a religious myth, and is evidence that humanity really went through the flood.

Roger Babson

Every great panic we have ever had has been foreshadowed by a general decline in observance of religious principles.

Tryon Edwards

The first step to improvement, whether mental, moral, or religious, is to know ourselves - our weakness, errors, deficiencies, and sins, that, by divine grace, we may overcome and turn from them all.

Richard Dawkins

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

Richard Dawkins

We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Richard Dawkins

Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation forthe existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Rose Macaulay

How far does one combine resistance to over-control with social justice, i.e. tolerable living for people in general? We are too selfish to be trusted, if left free, to give away enough to make people comfortable enough to give them a chance. Yet if all this is ordered for us, as to some extent it has to be, it so soon leads to tyranny. It is a very difficult problem. If only human beings had more pity, unselfishness, and justice and didn't need coercion to treat each other decently.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.

William Jennings Bryan

Love makes money-grabbing seem contemptible; love makes class prejudice impossible; love makes selfish ambition a thing to be despised; love converts enemies into friends.

Woodrow Wilson

If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.

Woodrow Wilson

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.

Woodrow Wilson

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

Russell Lynes

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. It is the dishonest businessman's substitute for conscience. It is the communicator's substitute, whether he is advertising man or editor or writer, for self-respect.

William Zinsser

I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.

William Jennings Bryan

Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.

William James

Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.

Roger Ascham

There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.

Robert Scheer

I teach at USC, and it's obvious to anyone who teaches college students that they don't cover much modern history and certainly not the modern presidency.

Robert M. Hutchins

Freedom of inquiry, freedom of discussion, and freedom of teaching - without these a university cannot exist.

William Hung

I enjoy tutoring. I just really enjoy the experience of teaching.

William Bennett

The secretary of education does not work for the education establishment. The secretary works for the American people.