KANSAS SKEPTIC

"I dream of painting and then I paint my dream."
~ Vincent van Gogh

"For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream."
~ Vincent van Gogh

"I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove."
~ Vincent van Gogh

"If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."
~ Vincent van Gogh

"I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create"
~ Vincent van Gogh

"It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill- it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy."
~ Vincent van Gogh

"That God of the clergymen, He is for me as dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me as such — be it so; but I love, and how could I feel love if I did not live, and if others did not live, and then, if we live, there is something mysterious in that. Now call that God, or human nature or whatever you like, but there is something which I cannot define systematically, though it is very much alive and very real, and see, that is God, or as good as God. To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, but a living one, who with irresistible force urges us toward aimer encore; that is my opinion."
~ Vincent van Gogh

"You can have manic-depression without having an ounce of creativity."
~ Patty Duke

"Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned."
~ Mark Twain's Notebook, 1898

"It's not the Psychics but the hard-nosed Scientists who have actually delivered the things that improve human life.
And to me, Science describes a world far more interesting than any psychic fantasies!"
~ James Randi

"No amount of belief makes something a fact."
~ James Randi

"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."
~ Isaac Asimov

"Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."
~ Isaac Asimov

"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly."
~ Isaac Asimov

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
~ Bertrand Russell

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
~ Bertrand Russell

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