REFLECTIONS

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his
mouth.
-- Carl Sandburg

First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little
while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever,
and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we
believe.
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is
one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
-- Sidney J. Harris

"Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good -- be good for something."
- Henry David Thoreau

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them - the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
-- Tom Stoppard

I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
-- George Carlin

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the
Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the
Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those
churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I
disbelieve them all."
From:
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, pp. 8,9

"Most simply, a metaphor is seeing one thing as something else, pretending 'this' is 'that' because we do not know how to think or talk about 'this,' so we use 'that' as a way of saying something about it... Poets use metaphor all the time because they are constantly speaking about the great unknowns -mortality, love, fear, joy, guilt, hope, and so on. Religious language is deeply Metaphorical for the same reason...

Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology, Fortress Press, 1982

Shallow understanding, from people of good will is more frustrating
than
absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his
hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands, his
head, and his heart is an artist." -- St. Francis of Assisi.

When you talk to God, it is called prayer,
When God talks to you, some call it psychosis.
It is not always a good idea to follow the voices in your head.
The problem with religions (or politics) which have all the answers
is that they do not allow any questions.
--C Hamilton

NATURAL SELECTION
Poetry Contributed by David from Michigan, USA

Not from preachers, epiphanies,
nor angels that rejoice,
but through my fellow Brights, (or humanists, UU, or other freethinkers)
you shall hear my voice.

As we reach for the stars,
and strive for an ideal,
to the conscience of humanity,
we make our appeal.

Full of promise and compassion,
not division and hate,
we're grounded in reality,
not apocalyptic fate.

For truth is not delusion,
but rather cold hard fact,
it stands without apology,
embellishment or tact.

Though sometimes catastrophic,
for the results that it brings,
only nature can be perfect,
for it's the measure of all things.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be
well-mannered.
-- Voltaire

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but
phone calls taper off.
-- Johnny Carson

People often say, with pride, "I'm not interested in politics." They might as well say, "I'm not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future."
-- Martha Gellhorn

Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us. And if they don't, they can go straight to hell.
-- Bill Clinton

"The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true
analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all.
No existent theology can be a final formulation of a spiritual truth."
Harry Emerson Fosdick

Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
-- David T. Wolf

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a
rat.
-- Lily Tomlin