"It's all incomprehensibly simple!" -Lorea

"Victory has nothing to do with killing or with dying. It is the creation of a better future." - Yasui Fodderman

"In the death of secrets, perishes also, the dread terror of denouement" - Jennifer Diane Reitz

"To the rational mind there can be no offense, no obscenity, no blasphemy, but only information of greater or lesser value." - Jennifer Diane Reitz

"Life is a game dear, play it well, you make your own heaven, you dig your own hell." - Jennifer Diane Reitz

"The true artist sculpts their own life in the medium of space-time. Therefore the life of the true artist must be re-made in their own image."  - Jennifer Diane Reitz

“You owe more devotion to the people around you than you do to some mystical spook in the sky. If there is a god, She has no need of being worshipped, and if She is good, no need to have her creations reject each other, and if She is secure and truly powerful, no need to encourage conversion and conquest.” - Jennifer Diane Reitz

"Games are the greatest expression of the abstract functions of consciousness. Consider the lowly game of chess: nothing more than a set of shaped objects scattered upon a painted slab. Yet the arbitrary agreement of two intellects enchants these physical objects with abilities, value, rules of behavior, and ultimate purpose. This is to me the most powerful and amazing capacity of the mind." - Jennifer Diane Reitz

"Truth, with a capital letter in front, with Absoluteness behind it, Truth is perhaps the greatest genuine evil ever invented by humankind, for at the root of every great evil ever committed, can always be found an unquestioned or unquestionable Truth, however simple, or however elaborate. Doubt is the friend of Reason, and the mother of discovery, but Absolute Truth is the destroyer of thought, and the slayer of all intellect." - Jennifer Diane Reitz

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian Doctrine." - George Washington The First  President Of The United States

"There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'."  - S.M. Stirling

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." - Thomas Jefferson The Third  President Of The United States And Author Of The Declaration Of Independence

"The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." - Abraham Lincoln

"The strong individual ... has the strength to recognize - and to live with the recognition - that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones. He creates himself by fashoning his own values; he has the pride to live by the values he wills." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folk are like leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed." - The Scarecrow of Oz, from 'The Marvelous Land of Oz' by Frank L. Baum

"My personal belief in this matter is that if the Antichrist can ever be found, we can put him together with the Christ, and use a dilithium crystal to control the flow of unlimited energy created as they bang their heads together for eternity. Warp drive will finally be realized." -Jennifer Diane Reitz

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.   Faith:  Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.   Heathen: A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. -Ambrose Bierce  (1842 - 1914)

"Sex is absolutely the worst basis for any long-term relationship. The need for sex can be replaced handily with masturbation, but a life-long partnership with someone you can feel utterly comfortable with, whom you can trust with your life, and whom you can depend upon in any circumstance cannot be replaced with anything at all." -Jennifer Diane Reitz

"Here's how I express what's wrong with America today... it's a lot easier to say 'I've got a gun and I'm not afraid to use it' than it is to say 'I've got a difference of opinion and I'm not afraid to say it'." - Sandra Lorraine Woodruff

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger."  -Nazi Leader Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."     -Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

"Gods are fragile things;  they may be killed by a whiff of science  or a dose of common sense." -Chapman Cohen

"Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality. All proffered samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to common tests. It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse. The characteristic of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generally known; authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists, there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics where the method of free inquiry has made its way. The "religious" would be the last to be willing that either the history or the content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device, but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against its being taught in any other spirit. -John Dewey, "Democracy in the Schools", 1908

"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." -Francis Bacon (1566-1628)

"How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years." John Burroughs (1837-1921)

"If you want to understand the conflict over gay marriage, there is a simple method. Whenever you hear or read anything whatsoever about the topic,  mentally replace the words  'homosexual', 'gay', and 'lesbian' with the words 'mixed-race' or 'mixed-religion'. That's all there is to it. The same arguments were used before, the same fears of the end of civilization were spouted, the same claims of good versus evil were demanded, and the same concerns about insult to morality were loudly proclaimed. It is the same ignorance, and the same blind, bigoted hatred." - Jennifer Diane Reitz

"Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain, and most fools do." -Benjamin Franklin

"If you never encounter anything in your community that offends you, you are not living in a free society. " -Kim Campbell,  Former Canadian Prime Minister

"If religion was based on facts, made rational sense, and was not filled with self-contradictions, it would be called 'science'." - Jennifer Diane Reitz

"A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under the color of law."  -Benjamin Franklin

"Do you think if it was the fairy tale about a man who lived inside of a whale and it was religion that Jack built a beanstalk today, you would know the difference? Why do you believe in one fairy tale and not the other? Just because adults told you it was true and they scared you into believing it, at pain of death, at pain of burning in hell." -Bill Maher

"Men rarely, if ever, manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child." - Robert A. Heinlein

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there." -- Robert A. Heinlein

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect." -James Madison, 1751-1836  Principal author of the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights,  4th U.S. President, (1809-1817)

"Sweet, peaceful eyelash spiders! Live in love by the ocean of my eyes!"  - Jennifer Diane Reitz

'Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of God. It...has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind'. -Thomas Paine, 'The Age of Reason'

"As you believe So you receive You are the Goddess Of your own life. As you decieve So you recieve You are the victim Of your own lies" -- Jennifer Diane Reitz

"Put down your weapons! You have you surrounded! Surrender! Come out with your hands open and be yourself!" -- Special Agent Isis Of The Police Farce

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." -Lewis Carroll

All Christians are loonies. Nutters. This goes for all other religions, of course, but let's stick to Christians, for now. Christians believe that a magical man, who somehow is his own father, got born on earth so that he could atone for a curse that he himself put on mankind, a curse derived from a human eating a magical fruit from a magical tree, the result of following the instructions of an enchanted, talking snake. A snake that the magical man made in the first place. They believe that if they worship this magical man they can be forgiven the curse the magical man both put upon them, and then atoned for in place of them, and thus will get to live in a magical fairyland after they die. If they don't do this, they will be punished eternally, just because. They get this plan of action from an old book of stories of rape, violence and really horrible acts written by more than two dozen people over three hundred years, based on the folk tales and legends collected from many violently disagreeing desert tribes. They know this book is true because the book itself says that the book is true. This is insanity, defined. - Jennifer Diane Reitz, 2011

"Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."  -Ayn Rand 1959

"There is only compromise and effort; the notion that you can have exactly what you want with no trouble is the foundation of misery. If you seek to be happy and content, learn to love the wonderful game of compromise, and become enthralled by the enchanting process of achieving it."   - Jennifer Diane Reitz 2009

"The 'Anthropic Principle' is theodicy; we do not live in the one special universe perfectly balanced for our kind of life, we exist, barely, in an incredibly hostile universe only because our kind of life managed to adapt just enough to cling to the tiny niche that is the earth."   - Jennifer Diane Reitz 2009

"There is no such thing as being the best. There is always someone more able than you at anything you can do, and there is always someone less able; we are always right in the middle. Never base your self worth on imagining yourself as the 'best' at anything."   - Jennifer Diane Reitz 2009

"Any society that permits homelessness, hunger, or untreated illness to exist has failed its own reason for being." - Jennifer Diane Reitz 2009

Catholicism: If you obey GLaDos, there will be cake. Protestantism: You don't need GameFaqs to beat Portal. Evangelical Christianity: Everyone must be 'encouraged' to obey GlaDos, because...CAKE! Judaism: GLaDos says that the android will bring the cake. Islam: Obey GLaDos and there will be 72 cakes. Scientology: Evil space aliens in airplanes made GLaDos to prevent you getting the cake, which is in a volcano. Buddhism: Renounce the cake. Zen Buddhism: Let go of renouncing the cake. Mormonism: Obey GLados and she will make you a baker. Satanism: Fuck GLaDos; use a cheat code and the cake is in the room shown at the end. Hinduism: Run the Enrichment Center course; GLaDos will download you into a new clone until you get it right. Then cake. Atheism: The cake is a lie.

(1)  Logic is valid. (2)  Reality actually exists. (3)  Nothing can travel faster than light. Bell's Theorem:  one or more of these is wrong. - Jennifer Diane Reitz 2010

What if the issue of macro-scale quantum entanglement was itself proof that we are living in a Bostrum Simulation? - Jennifer Diane Reitz, 2011

"You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe." - Mercer from 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?' by Phillip K. Dick

"It is not accurate to say that there is horror in the universe. The universe is horror." - Dr. Werner Heisenberg, physicist

Life would be unbearable without the ability to imagine far better fictional worlds; yet it is intolerable to yearn for those same worlds. - Jennifer Diane Reitz, 2011

"Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man." - Arthur Schopenhauer