Best of Rationality Quotes
Sheldon: "More wrong?" Wrong is an absolute state and not subject to gradation.
Stuart: Of course it is. It's a little wrong to call a tomato a vegetable; it's very wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.
-- The Big Bang Theory
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Science is interesting and if you don't agree, you can fuck off."
-- Richard Dawkins quoting a former editor of New Scientist magazine.
"People will then often say, 'But surely it's better to remain an Agnostic just in case?' This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I've been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)" -- Douglas Adams
"It’s hard to argue with a counter-example."
-- Roger Brockett
"If you’ve never missed a flight, you’re spending too much time in airports."
-- Umesh Vazirani (as quoted by Scott Aaronson)
"Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned." -- Avicenna, Medieval Philosopher
"If you understand something in only one way, then you do not really understand it at all." -- Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind
"Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California." -- Edward Abbey
"You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words." -- William Congreve
"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity."
-- Deuteronomy 25:11-12 (New International Version)
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
-- M. Cartmill