Atheists From The United States

"What's the punch line here? Physiologically, it doesn't come cheap being a bastard 24 hours a day."

"Orthodox Judaism has this amazing set of rules: everyday there's a bunch of strictures of things you're supposed to do, a bunch you're not supposed to do, and the number you're supposed to do is the same number as the number of bones in the body. The number that you're not supposed to do is the same number as the number of days in the year. The amazing thing is, nobody knows what the rules are! Talmudic rabbis have been scratching each others' eyes out for centuries arguing over which rules go into the 613. The numbers are more important than the content. It is sheer numerology."

"But the very fact that matter in the cosmos is still moving, rather than at rest, is the single most surprising thing about the universe."

"We are not getting our ulcers being chased by Saber-tooth tigers, we're inventing our social stressors — and if some baboons are good at dealing with this, we should be able to as well. Insofar as we're smart enough to have invented this stuff and stupid enough to fall for it, we have the potential to be wise enough to keep the stuff in perspective."

"The notion of the psychopathology of the shaman works just as readily in understanding the roots of major Western religions as well."

"The far-from-original point I will try to make now should seem obvious: There is an unsettling similarity between the rituals of the obsessive-compulsive and the rituals of the observantly religious."

"The ones who I train to become scientists go at it like the warriors they should be, overturning existing knowledge and reigning paradigms, each discovery a murder of their scientific ancestors. And if I have trained them well, I must derive whatever satisfaction I can from the inevitability of becoming their Oedipal target someday."

"Most of us don't collapse into puddles of stress-related disease."

"Get it wrong, and we call it a cult. Get it right, in the right time and the right place, and maybe, for the next few millennia, people won't have to go to work on your birthday."

"This is a classic case of what is often called physics envy, the disease among scientists where the behavioral biologists fear their discipline lacks the rigor of physiology, the physiologists wish for the techniques of the biochemists, the biochemists covet the clarity of the answers revealed by molecular biologists, all the way down the down until you get to the physicists, who confer only with God."

"Finish this lecture, go outside, and unexpectedly get gored by an elephant, and you are going to secrete glucocorticoids. There's no way out of it. You cannot psychologically reframe your experience and decide you did not like the shirt, here's an excuse to throw it out — that sort of thing."

"We are a fine species with some potential. Yet we are racked by sickening amounts of violence. Unless we are hermints, we feel the threat of it, often as a daily shadow. And regardless of where we hide, should our leaders push the button, we will all be lost in a final global violence."

"I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means that you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it."

"If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble."

"But sometimes reality chooses not to conform to our preferences."

"We should willingly take risks in supporting new projects. The tendency is to play it safe when funding is low, but we need to remember that the greatest risks have the greatest payoffs."

"Excessive bureaucracy is distracting, time-consuming, and destructive to creativity."

"It is clear to me that under the right conditions, future technologies will be created that we cannot even imagine."

"Innovation is the key to the future, but basic research is the key to future innovation."

"Creativity is the basis of all innovation, and although it is doubtful that it can be taught, creativity should be nurtured in those who have it."

"Young people should be given good support and freedom in their research. They are the greatest source of scientific creativity because they are not as committed to existing scientific orthodoxy, and they have the energy and enthusiasm to push new ideas."

"When I got back into show business in 1961, I felt — for obvious reasons — that nothing in my life went right, and I realized that millions of people felt the same way. So when I first came back my catch phrase was "nothing goes right." Early on, that was my setup for a lot of jokes."

"Why, that's the story of my life--no respect; I mean, I don't get no respect at all!"

"I tell ya, my wife likes to talk during sex. Last night, she called me from a motel."

"The killers are wanted in all 50 states."

"I tell ya, my wife's a lousy cook. After dinner, I don't brush my teeth. I count them."

"What a childhood I had. My mother never breast-fed me. She said she liked me as a friend."

"I was so ugly... When I was born, the doctor slapped my mother!"

"I tell ya, my family were always big drinkers. When I was a kid, I was missing. They put my picture on a bottle of Scotch."

"I live in a tough neighborhood. They got a children's zoo. Last week, four kids escaped."

"A homeless guy came up to me on the street, said he hadn't eaten in four days. I told him, "Man, I wish I had your willpower.""

"My old man never liked me. He gave me my allowance in traveler's checks."

"I tell ya, I grew up in a tough neighborhood. The other night a guy pulled a knife on me. I could see it wasn't a real professional job. There was butter on it."

"When I was a kid I got no respect. When my parents got divorced there was a custody fight over me... and no one showed up."

"I was an ugly kid. I worked in a pet store. People kept asking how big I get."

"...in Dangerfield, there has always been something else in addition to the comedian. This is a man who has failed at everything, even comedy. Rodney Dangerfield is his third name in show business; he flopped under two earlier names as well as his real name. Who is really at home inside that red, sweating face and that knowing leer? The most interesting thing about "Back to School," which is otherwise a pleasant but routine comedy, is the puzzle of Rodney Dangerfield. Here is a man who reminds us of some of the great comedians of the early days of the talkies - of Groucho Marx and W. C. Fields - because, like them, he projects a certain mystery. Marx and Fields were never just being funny. There was the sense that they were getting even for hurts so deep that all they could do was laugh about them. It's the same with Dangerfield."

"I like to date schoolteachers. If you do something wrong, they make you do it over again."

"I was an ugly kid. When I was born, after the doctor cut the cord, he hung himself."

"In my life I've been through plenty. when I was three years old, my parents got a dog. I was jealous of the dog, so they got rid of me."

"If all goes well, about a week. If not, about an hour and a half."

"What a childhood I had. Once on my birthday my ol' man gave me a bat. The first day I played with it, it flew away."

"I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous, everyone hasn't met me yet."

"I told my doctor I broke my arm in two places. He told me to keep out of those places."

"There goes the neighborhood."

"When I was a kid, I never went to Disneyland. My ol' man told me Mickey Mouse died in a cancer experiment."

"No one does children's stories like Maurice Sendak … over a hundred books in all. He's won nearly every major prize for children's literature plus the national medal of arts. And no wonder. Just look at these titles: In the Night Kitchen; Higglety Pigglety Pop!; Outside Over There; Chicken Soup with Rice; and of course, the most loved and famous of all, Where the Wild Things Are. Our own tattered copy is a Moyers family keepsake. We read it to our children when it was first published forty years ago. We've read it to our grandchildren in the last decade and we fully expect that one day they will be reading it to their grandkids, too. But let me share a Sendak secret with you. A seven-year-old hearing this story couldn't have more fun than a 70-year-old reading it. Where the Wild Things Are is ageless and timeless."

"The ripeness was a letter that John Keats wrote to his brother who emigrated to America describing what it was like to have a peach or piece of a peach in his mouth. And it's one of the sexiest things you will ever read of how slow you should take the peach. Don't rush it. Let it go through your palette. Let it lie on your tongue. Let it melt a little bit. Let it run from the corners. It's like describing the most incredible sex orgy. And then, you bite. But, it must be so ripe. It must be so delicious. In other words, you must not waste a second of this deliciousness which for him was life and being a great poet. That you savor every, everything that happened. I want to get ripe."

"To young readers Sendak's "kiddie books" – in particular, 1963's hugely popular Where the Wild Things Are – were anything but idiotic, creating imaginative visions of childhood that adults might have considered dark, cruel or disturbing, but which thrilled and delighted three generations of children."

"My big concern is me and what do I do now until the time of my death. That is valid. That is useful. That is beautiful. That is creative. And also, I want to be free again. I want to be free like when I was a kid … Where we just had fun. What I mean by this is I've had my career. I've had my success. God willing, it should have happened to Herman Melville who deserved it a great deal more, you know? Imagine him being on Bill Moyers' show. Nothing good happened to Herman Melville. I want to see me to the end working, living for myself. "Ripeness is all." Now, interpreting what ripeness is our own individual problem. … So, what is the point of it all? Not leaving legacies. But being ripe. Being ripe."

"He is, at heart, a curmudgeon, but a delightful one, with a vast range of knowledge, a wicked sense of humor and a talent for storytelling and mimicry. … He spends his days pondering his heroes: Mozart, Keats, Blake, Melville and Dickinson. He admires and yearns for their “ability to be private, the ability to be alone, the ability to follow some spiritual course not written down by anybody.” Mr. Sendak is quick to insist that a vast distance stands between his own accomplishments and theirs. “I’m not one of those people,” he said. “I can’t pretend to be.” Still, he has the feeling that “I will do something yet that is purely for me but will create for someone in the future that passion that Blake and Keats did in me.” What he has failed to consider, though, is that he may already have."