Reset, readjust, restart, refocus.As many times as you need to.
Just don't quit!
Do something just for you every day which makes you feel good.
Take some me time to do whatever makes you happy, and create the habit of doing this every day.
By looking after your soul, it creates a ripple effect throughout your life, and others will benefit from the refreshed you.
MermaidDiagram Comment.
Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.
To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. - Hitchens 3:16
What do you most value in your friends?Their continued existence.
To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.
Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.
I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.
What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.
Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.
Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—in view of the overall shortage of time—by patience.
God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.
We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.
Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.
How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.
Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like.
I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.
My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.
If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.
it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists
Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.
Cheap booze is a false economy.
Hardest of all, as one becomes older, is to accept that sapient remarks can be drawn from the most unwelcome or seemingly improbable sources, and that the apparently more trustworthy sources can lead one astray.
I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator - that's beyond my conceit.
It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.
The Auden/Kallman relationship had this to be said for it: It affirmed that it's better to be blatant than latent.
There either is a god or there is not; there is a 'design' or not.
There is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it.
Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either write posthumously or you can't.
Not since North Korean media declared Kim Jong-il to be the reincarnation of Kim Il Sung has there been such a blatant attempt to create a necrocracy, or perhaps mausolocracy, in which a living claimant assumes the fleshly mantle of the departed.
If only religion were an opiate. No known narcotic rots the brain so fast.
The sad thing is that so many people, in the belief that the universe is organized to suit and influence them, are willing to sacrifice even the slight cranial capacity with which evolution has equipped us.
We can always be sure of one thing—that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. This is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments.
Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but...Friends, somebody said, are "god's apology for relations." (p. 129)
It's like a memorial to Atlantis or Lyonesse: these are the stone buoys that mark a drowned world.
Las atrocidades religiosas del pasado y el presente no se han producido porque nosotros seamos malos, sino porque en la naturaleza es un hecho que desde el punto de vista biológico la especie humana es racional solo en parte.
Las niñas novias de la India son azotadas y en ocasiones quemadas vivas si se considera que la lastimera dote que aportan al matrimonio es demasiado irrisoria.
Cuanto peor es el infractor, más devoto resulta ser.
Durante la mayor parte de la historia de la humanidad la idea de un Estado total o absoluto estuvo íntimamente ligada a la religión.
Perfectionists and zealots can break but not bend; in my experience they are subject to burnout from diminishing returns or else, to borrow Santayana’s definition of the fanatic, they redouble their efforts just when they have lost sight of their ends.
Knowledge Strategy Execution
Motivation is a byproduct of action, not the catalyst for it.
Control your thoughts or your thoughts will control you.
Today is a new day. Stop living in the past.
Focus on the step in front of you, not the whole staircase.
You attract what you are, not what you want. If you want great, then be great.
Your goals should scare you a little and excite you a lot.
