New Arrivals: March 29

 

"Remember the first rule of conspiracy theories: follow the monkey." - Stephen Colbert

"I live by the rule 'Cut to the but because everything before the but is bullshit.'" -  Catriona McPherson

"Pop knew that the best way to rid yourself of trauma was to bequeath it to your children.  He was a generous man."  - Harrison Scott Key

"The laws of commerce, its systems of incentives and rewards, guarantee that every Henry Ford will create at least one Al Capone."  - Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz

"Freshly baked bread sells itself." - Pete Barnstrom

"Victims of hatred are fungible; any convenient target will do." - Neil Steinberg

“There is absolutely no scenario in which it is acceptable for a prosecutor to accuse a defendant of witchcraft in a twenty-first-century court." -Justice Michael E. Vigil.

 "I suppose you don’t strictly need to know how to read to burn down a library." - John Luzar

"You've got to speak well of the dead, especially if you outlive them." - Desiree Burch

"For some people, Christian love is just a stone's throw away." -- Rev. Pat Morgan.

"A problem shared is a problem spread." - Malcolm Mackay

"Hope is a discipline." - Mariame Kaba

Courage and Fear

"Courage is remembered. And cowardice is never forgotten. Choose wisely." - Neil Steinberg

"To have courage you have to love something." - Joy Ann Reid

"Not all capes wear heroes." -Zach Maxwell

 "Fear doesn't stop death so much as it stops life." -Bill Fitzhugh

"There is no man smaller than the coward at a hero’s wake.” - Old Irish Saying

"A sense of responsibility is often an effective substitute for courage." - Melvin Purvis

“Someone once told me that fear and courage are like lightning and thunder. They both start out at the same time, but fear travels faster and arrives sooner. If we just wait a moment, the requisite courage will be along shortly.” – Lawrence Block

Conspiracy Theories

" The beauty of conspiracy theories, though, is that they are ever-flowing streams that easily slip around obstacles in their path to get to their destination." - Philip Bump

 "Most conspiracy theorists have never been project planners." - Merlin Mann

“Conspiracy theories are insults to history.”  - Neil Steinberg

“With conspiracy theories, inconsistency is a feature, not a bug." - Denver Riggleman

"Even for those of us who don't see black helicopters under our beds, conspiracy theory has become the horoscope of the late 1990s." -Mark Dery

 

Religion

"For some people, Christian love is just a stone's throw away." -- Rev. Pat Morgan.

"They've both got the same damned god.  They just don't know how to read." - Jesse Welles

 "In Sunday School I asked the priest why there was a special school for Christian myths but not for Norse myths." - Ada Palmer

  "Even when there is only one religion there is more than one  religion." - Ian R. MacLeod

"God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, He's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play the scenes." - Garrison Keillor

"I am not a God-fearing man and that feeling is entirely mutual." - Andy Zaltzman

"Religion: it's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion." - Jon Stewart

"Wherever you find a god you'll find somebody waiting to take charge of the burnt offerings." - O. Henry

"God works in mysterious ways and God isn't taking any questions at this time." - Dan Savage

"You gotta treat God like Grandma."  - Jerron Paxton

"If childhood piety was like having chicken pox, its resurgence was like shingles -- the itching had come back decades later as pain." - Thomas Perry

“Only one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet” – Mark Twain

"There are a lot worse things to believe in than God." -Suzanne M. Wolfe

"I think there probably is humor in heaven, or earth wouldn't look like this." - Ovidia Yu

"Some times I feel like God's favorite sitcom." - Marie-Helene Bertino

"Are you aware that there’s an abundance of recent science that actually confirms the Genesis account of creation?" - Louisiana State Senator John Milkovich (D-Shreveport), 3/29/2016

"TiVo is god in my household." -Michael Powell, Chairman of the FCC, January 2003.

"If God is in the details, then the Code of Federal Regulations and especially the Federal Register are leading candidates for secular deification." -Joe Morehead

"You don't want to read the Book of Revelation and the federal budget in one sitting. It is pretty scary." -Gene Goldsmith, (former) state representative, 42nd District of Washington

"I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth." -Bill Bryson

"A true holy book could fit on an index card, but most of the words on it haven't been invented yet." - Will Ludwigsen

"The second law of thermodynamics, simply put, is as follows: left to themselves, things tend to go to hell in a handbasket." -Cecil Adams

"In eternity, there will be no underground beatnik intellectual dive cafe's hashing phony, ambiguous 'word art' for you to lounge in and laugh it up with your cheap wine coolers and funky sexually-vague groupies." - An anonymous correspondent of the Kook's Museum.

"Don't play God.  He always wins." - Terry Pratchett

"If it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion." - Ursula K. LeGuin

"I frankly don't care if someone thinks I'm going to hell after death and I'm not going to argue with him for the same reason I'm not going to argue with someone who believes that I'm going to the lost continent of Atlantis after dinner." - Dan Savage

"Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them." -Umberto Eco

Sanity and Insanity

 "What is paranoia, after all, but  an extreme form of gullibility?" - Mat Coward

“That way, of course, lies madness, but I would be the last person to say that madness is not a solution.”  -James Thurber

"Yes, I am insane. Thanks for asking." -Harlan Coben 

Truth and Falsehood

 

"Contrarian arguments are generally contrarian because they're bullshit." -Scott Lemieux

"A lying man produces more plausible excuses." - Dave Gordon

"Truth is stoned to death by tiny pebbles." - Judy Dugas

Or perhaps the truth is less interesting than the facts?" -Amy Weiss, Senior VicePresident for Communications, RIAA

"I am always true to my word, which happens to be 'dishonest.'" - Lorrie B. Potters

"Bullshit still works as fertilizer."  - Chuck Wendig

"Truth is very scarce in official documents. It is not expected by the public, and it would be utterly thrown away upon Congress." -J. Ross Browne, U.S. Treasury official, 1858
 

Conscience

 

"The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience." -Harper Lee

"A buried conscience is the worst ghost of all."  - Janice Law (slightly edited)

"An attorney must have either a guilty conscience or no conscience at all." -David Mamet 

"People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well and is cheaper, and more easily obtained." - Jerome K. Jerome