Elrac's Journal: Quotes of the day

This one had my girlfriend and me roaring with laughter:

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the same extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

-- Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken, American editor and critic (1880-1956).

Wait, there's more:

The more I read about man and his maniacal ruthlessness and his murderous envious scatological soul, the more I realize that he will never change. Our stupidity is immortal, nothing will change it. The same mistakes, the same prejudices, the same injustice, the same lusts wheel endlessly around the parade ground of the centuries. Immutable and ineluctable. I wish I could believe in a god of some kind but I simply cannot.

-- Richard Burton, Welsh actor (1925-1984).

And on a more political note:

History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.

-- Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813.