GEORGE BERNARD SHAW on Religion

SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD

English dramatist, critic

(1856-1950)

• "All great truths begin as blasphemies."

• “Beware of the man whose god is in the skies.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.”

• “Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.”

• “Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”

• “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”

• “The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.”

• “Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid...There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party.”

• “Morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.”

• "Old men are dangerous; it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world."

• “A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “There are scores of thousands of human insects who are ready at a moment’s notice to reveal the Will of God on every possible subject.” (Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon)

• “There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.”

• “Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't.”

Today is George Bernard Shaw's Birthday.

He was born 153 years ago on July 26, 1856.

WISDOM OF LAZARUS LONG - Part 1

HEINLEIN, ROBERT 

American author 

(1907-1988)

All of the following are taken from the sayings of Lazarus Long, a fictional character created by Heinlein. 

Sources: Time Enough for Love (1973) and/or The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (1978)

See also: 

WISDOM OF LAZARUS LONG - Part 2 

and MORE FROM ROBERT HEINLEIN

     

• “Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.”

• “The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.”

• “Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”

• “Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.”

• “A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.”

• “God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent ---it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.”

• “’God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends.' This may not be true, but it sounds good ---and is no sillier than any other theology.”

• “History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.”

• “History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — i.e., none to speak of.”

• “If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.”

• “It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”

• “Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.”

• “The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is the Lord God of Creation. Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.”

• “Natural laws have no pity.”

• “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

• “Of all the strange ‘crimes’ that human beings have legislated out of nothing, ‘blasphemy’ is the most amazing ---with ‘obscenity’ and ‘indecent exposure’ fighting it out for second and third place.”

• “One man’s magic is another man’s engineering. ‘Supernatural’ is a null word.”

Learn more about Robert Heinlein HERE

Find more quotations from Robert Heinlein HERE

Read about his character Lazarus Long HERE