So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and to...
I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I'll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else. Brian Sibley: Or brains even? Oh gosh, yes, brains is one of the least. You can be a l...
It facilitates labor and thought so much that there is always the temptation in large schools to omit the endless task of meeting the wants of each single mind, and to govern by steam. But it is at frightful cost. Our modes of Education aim to expedi...
I think one of the biggest reasons people have difficulty believing in God is because they don't understand Him. You often hear doubting comments like, 'If there is a God then why and why and how could He allow...?' Perhaps if people were to invest...
Obama, he wouldn't have been in office without what happened to me and a lot of black people before me. He would never have been in that situation, no doubt in my mind. He would get there eventually, but it would have been a lot longer. So I am glad ...
One can't prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person. If a man is keen on reading, I think he ought to open his mind to some older man who knows him and his life, and to take his advice i...
So in that sense, I and my fellow horror writers are absorbing and defusing all your fears and anxieties and insecurities and taking them upon ourselves. We’re sitting in the darkness beyond the flickering warmth of your fire, cackling into our cal...
We're surrounded by people who don’t make that distinction. If you say to them ‘there’s a monster living in my closet, you can’t see him, but you gotta have faith that he’s there’ people would say ‘well that’s ridiculous, you’re out...
Growth is an unavoidable part of life. Whether we mean for it to happen or not, our bodies continually nourish and regenerate themselves, our minds continually learn and expand, and our lives continually evolve. We have the power to craft our growth ...
History teacher Bob Alston's "expertise late not in his sweeping knowledge of the topic but in his ability to pick after a tumble, to get a fix on what he does not know, and to generate a roadmap to guide his new learning. He was an expert at cultiva...
Atheists are spiritual slackers, right? We are the stoners of the cosmos. We think we’re all over-intelligent, free-thinking, free-spirited, uber-cool, hippy-dippy, science-minded, leaning-to-the-left, hedonistic, children of Theodorus the Atheist....
America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can't be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of...
Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emotions, that sin shrivels the emotions. When you sin...
We are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural en...
She bent and placed a single daisy upon the grave. A simple white daisy. The plainest of flowers, perhaps the purest, Elspeth thought. It had cost next to nothing at all, and perhaps that was the point. She wasn’t being cheap. She was being symboli...
The universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. There is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. ...
People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very cleve...
I don't mind being pale. In high school, it seemed like everybody cared about being tan all year round, but I haven't really thought about it since then. I don't go to a tanning bed, and I get bored when I lay out. I put sunscreen on when I'm in the ...
Hungry for beautiful words, the fox comes rooting around in the hedge, almost too close to the fire. He reads my mind with one glance and is gone. All my poetry is now trotting around the bushes inside him, maybe some day to be partly eaten or left t...
Be thankful for your achievements; be thankful for your accomplishments, no matter how big or small. Be thankful for the mind to complete the accomplishments. Be thankful for your past, present, and future. And know that if you are creating success s...
My gut knotted as I wrote from the point of view of characters whose lives were rooted in bigotry and intolerance. But there were also narrators who made my heart soar. Disabling my censor, allowing each character to speak his or her mind, I have, in...
