You've got me on one of my favourite things here - I collect quotes. I'll kick off with a first batch of a few for everyone's persual:
The business of skepticism is to be dangerous. Skepticism challenges established institutions. If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of skeptical thought, they will probably not restrict their skepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials, and 35,000-year-old channelees. Maybe they’ll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Perhaps they’ll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?—Carl Sagan
I believe that people have a right to decide their own destinies; people own themselves. I also believe that, in a democracy, government exists because (and only so long as) individual citizens give it a ‘temporary license to exist’—in exchange for a promise that it will behave itself. In a democracy, you own the government—it doesn’t own you.—Frank Zappa
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.—Alvin Toffler
If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it’s not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.—Neil deGrasse Tyson
Religion’s just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all.—Wally Lamb
Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.—Christopher Hitchens
Life has meaning not because of what we have or what we know or what we are 'in ourselves' but because we care about something. Popular melodrama aside, meaning is not deep inside of us but on the outside, in the ideas, things and people we attach ourselves to and their attachment to us.—Robert C. Solomon
So far as an 'early grave,' I'm more concerned with quality of life. No sense in having a mint condition classic car if you're afraid to take it out of the garage.—Doug Stanhope
The great premise of the moraliser is this: I don’t like it, so you mustn’t do it; I don’t like it, so you’re not allowed to see it; I don’t like it, so you can’t read it. That is the great premise of the moraliser—wanting to close things down for other people.—A.C. Grayling
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do.—D. Dale Gulledge
The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.―Nelson Henderson
The answer is simple: if you cannot find meaning inherent in life right now, as you live it in this visible world, the addition of an infinite amount more of the same isn't about to somehow make it any more meaningful. Add a whole string of zeroes to a zero and watch what happens.—Robert M. Price
