“Johnson is a radical skeptic, insisting, in the best Socratic tradition, that everything be put on the table for examination. By contrast, most skeptics opposed to him are selective skeptics, applying their skepticism to the things they dislike (notably religion) and refusing to apply their skepticism to the things they do like (notably Darwinism). On two occasions I’ve urged Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, to put me on its editorial board as the resident skeptic of Darwinism. Though Shermer and I know each other and are quite friendly, he never got back to me about joining his editorial board.”

“And middle-class women, although taught to value established forms, are in the same position as the working class: neither can use established forms to express what the forms were never intended to express (and may very well operate to conceal).”

“____________FREEDOM____________Each person has the right to freedom.A freedom of speech.A freedom of will.A freedom to love.A freedom free of persecution.A freedom to be an individual if they so desire.A freedom from discrimination.A freedom of religion and faith.A freedom from discrimination.A freedom to share life with others and not judge.A freedom to be who they are.God, Buddha and Allah gave us a choice.We chose freedom so that we could follow in their wisdom, knowledge and footsteps.Yet, we practice discrimination, persecution and bias on a daily basis.We live by man’s word alone and not theirs!It’s time we changed that and become who we were meant to be!I’m not out to change the world.I’m only out to change one person and then the rest will then follow of their own accord.”

“I can ill-afford to turn the fickle propensity of my attitude into the rock hard conviction of a fact. For if my attitude is given that much room to run, it will run from the very ‘fact’ that it purports to be.”

“Quiet people always know more than they seem. Although very normal, their inner world is by default fronted mysterious and therefore assumed weird. Never underestimate the social awareness and sense of reality in a quiet person; they are some of the most observant, absorbent persons of all.”

“Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.”

“Take lightly what you hear about individuals. We need not distort trust for our paltry little political agendas. We tend to trust soulless, carried information more than we trust soulful human beings; but really most people aren’t so bad once you sit down and have an honest, one-on-one conversation with them, once, with an open heart, you listen to their explanations as to why they act the way they act, or say what they say, or do what they do.”

“Satire’s nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.”

“We all know that any emotional bias — irrespective of truth or falsity — can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value…. If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.”

“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.”

“I’m convinced that most men don’t know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man’s atrocities, but wouldn’t dream of imprisoning a mother for her son’s crime?”

“BLACK AND WHITEI was born intoA religion of Light,But with so many otherReligions andPhilosophies,How do I know whichONEIs right?Is it notMy birthrightTo seek out the light?To find TruthAfter surveying all the proof,Am I supposedTo loveOr fight?And why do all those whoTry to guide me,Always start by dividingAnd multiplying me – From what they considerWrong or right?I thought,There were no wallsFor whoever beams truth and light.And how can one speak on Light’s behalf,lf all they doIs act black,But talk WHITE?”

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

“It’s not at all hard to understand a person; it’s only hard to listen without bias.”