..
"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world and I do not find
in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They
are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men,
women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been
burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this
coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to
support roguery and error all over the earth."
--Thomas Jefferson
Errol Morris
Philip Glass
Larry David
Cormac McCarthy
Jared Diamond
Richard Dawkins
Daniel Dennett
Ralph Nader and Roger Ebert
Johann
Sebastian Bach (esp. the Goldberg Variations as played by Glenn Gould),
Wu Tang Clan, Philip Glass, Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys, Caleb Sampson,
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Andrés Segovia, Ol' Dirty Bastard (esp. the
album "Nigga Please"), Beck, Erik Satie, The Pixies, The Velvet
Underground, Ravi Shankar, Leadbelly, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert
Johnson, Al Green
Gates
of Heaven; No Country for Old Men; Juno; Sling Blade; Fargo; Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control;
Rushmore; The Royal Tenenbaums; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; The Fog of War; The Thin Blue Line;
Citizen Kane; Mulholland Dr; Blue Velvet; Fight Club; Dr Strangelove; The Shining;
The Searchers; The Truman Show; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind;
American Splendor; Me and You and Everyone We Know; Michael Clayton; The Big Lebowski;
Kill Bill (Vols. I & II); Metropolis; A Clockwork Orange; My
Neighbor Totoro; Spirited Away; Coffee and Cigarettes; Paris, Texas;
The Apostle; Crumb; Fahrenheit 9/11; Bowling for Columbine; Pulp
Fiction; The New World; The Man Who Wasn't There; Hellboy; Sin City;
Glengarry Glen Ross; Ghost World; Animal House; Donnie Darko; Memento;
Magnolia; This Is Spinal Tap; Best In Show; 8 1/2; The Third Man; Touch
of Evil
Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, I am Not an Animal, the Daily Show, Da Ali G Show
Moby-Dick, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Don Quixote, The Satanic Verses,
Grendel, Origin of the Species, Das Kapital, The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Darwin's
Dangerous Idea, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
The Name of the Rose, Consciousness Explained, The Unbearable Lightness
of Being
"Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep. I know him not, and
never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how
understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he
has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but
my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back
parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no
face."
Moby-Dick, Ch. 86
"[Y]ou
think you're brave and courageous, when you're really old; you think
you're strong, when you're really feeble; you think you can go righting
wrongs when age has bent you in half -- and, above all, that you're a
knight, when you're not, because even though gentlemen can become
knights, poor ones can't!"
Don Quixote, Vol. 2, Ch.
6
"The great ships hung motionless in the air, over
every nation on Earth. Motionless they hung, huge, heavy, steady in the
sky, a blasphemy against nature. Many people went straight into shock
as their minds tried to encompass what they were looking at. The ships
hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
And still nothing happened.
Then there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of open
ambient sound. Every hi fi set in the world, every radio, every
television, every cassette recorder, every woofer, every tweeter, every
mid-range driver in the world quietly turned itself
on."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Ch.
3
"The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak
-- was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an
enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up,
terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston
stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in
elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ch.
1
Charles
Darwin, Karl Marx, Diogenes of Sinope, Noam Chompsky, Ralph Nader,
Zippy the Pinhead, David Hume, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Johann
Sebastian Bach, Edgar Allan Poe, Glenn Gould, Bill Clinton, Robert G
Ingersoll