I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge.  It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress.  No agnostic has ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
--Daniel J. Boorstin

One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it.  The also believed the world was flat.
--Mark Twain

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking.  It's nothing to brag about.  And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsesnse that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.
--Bill Maher

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
--Kurt Vonnegut

The most costly of all follies it to believe passionately in the palpably not true.
--H.L. Mencken

An agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions.
--Studs Terkel

I was raised an atheist.  Every Sunday, we went nowhere.  We prayed for nothing.  And all our prayers were answered.
--Heidi Joyce

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

--Howard Zinn

The sophistication of truth
Posted by Seth Godin on September 30, 2014
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/09/the-sophistication-of-truth.html


A common form of complexity is the sophistication of fear.

Long words when short ones will do. Fancy clothes to keep the riffraff out and to give us a costume to hide behind. Most of all, the sneer of, "you don't understand" or, "you don't know the people I know..."

"It's complicated," we say, even when it isn't.

We invent these facades because they provide safety. Safety from the unknown, from being questioned, from being called out as a fraud. These facades lead to bad writing, lousy communication and a refuge from the things we fear.

I'm more interested in the sophistication required to deliver the truth.

Simplicity.

Awareness.

Beauty.

These take fearlessness. This is, "here it is, I made this, I know you can understand it, does it work for you?"

Our work doesn't have to be obtuse to be important or brave.

Seth Godin is a writer, a speaker and an agent of change.

SOURCE
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/09/the-sophistication-of-truth.html

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
--E.F.Schumacher

If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart.. I'll always be with you.
~Winnie the Pooh



...and a fond goodbye to Dr Wilson, who taught us well and with great humor... he died two days ago in a motor vehicle accident...

The fool who persists
in his folly
will become wise.
--William Blake

Life is tough,
but it's tougher
when you're stupid.
--John Wayne

"The greater the struggle, the more glorious the triumph."
The Butterfly Circus
http://vimeo.com/17150524
22:35 long and well worth the time invested

‎Mistakes
are always forgiveable
if one has the courage to admit
to them.
~~Bruce Lee

Courage is not the absence of fear,
but rather the judgment that
something else
is more important than fear.
--unknown