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edbe955
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Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
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truth
presidency
wishful-thinking
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Douglas Adams |
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a041cd9
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"Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.
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myth
responsibility
morality
reason
fear
love
truth
atheist-argument
christianity-is-immoral
christopher-hitchens
compulsory
divine-dictatorship
eternal-punishment
great-atheist-argument
hitchens
hitchslap
homo-sapiens
immoral-christianity
love-your-neighbor
supreme-being
dawkins
indifference
human-sacrifice
eternal-father
totalitarianism
debate
dictatorship
richard-dawkins
wishful-thinking
belief
evidence
ethics
atheism
health
intellect
atheist
redemption
crime
guilt
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Christopher Hitchens |
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9e8869d
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If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean--even if it did build muscle--whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a repeat performance, or a Groundhog Day. And the mind ought to, but cannot, set some limits to wish-thinking. All right, same but with more money, an even sturdier penis, slightly different parents, a briefer latency period... the thing is absurd. I seriously would like to know what it was to be a woman, but like blind Tiresias would also want the option of re-metamorphosing if I wished. How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities.
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money
opportunity
youth
women
life
philosophy
conundrums
groundhog-day
self-contradiction
tiresias
wishful-thinking
parents
desire
old-age
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Christopher Hitchens |
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542b103
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I'm not saying she was lying to me, but she just acted so different before I got to know her, and if she really isn't like what she was at the beginning, I wish she could have just said so.
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wishful-thinking
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Stephen Chbosky |
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7e8567a
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I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the good kind that was collectible but the bad kind that had arthritis.
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reality
wishful-thinking
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David Sedaris |
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d2bdba3
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IV The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels. V If the many become the same as the few, when possess'd, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man. VI If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot. VII The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite.
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imagination
limitation
wishful-thinking
possession
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William Blake |
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43dbc58
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Rick feels almost the way he used to halfway through his third drink, his favorite moment, the way he wishes all moments in life could feel: heightened with the sense that anything could happen at any moment--that being alive is important, because just when you least expect it, you might receive exactly what you least expect.
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life
possibility
wishful-thinking
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Douglas Coupland |
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4f7c44f
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In the days when wishing was having, I got what I wished and then I wish I hadn't.
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wishful-thinking
wishes
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Emma Donoghue |
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380b7b5
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In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure, death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing, the world lies waiting.
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life-lessons
growing-up
wishful-thinking
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Cormac McCarthy |
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5056863
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...the day had been both unprofitable and unsatisfactory, and he was wishing he could live it over again.
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louisa-may-alcott
wishful-thinking
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Louisa May Alcott |
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ea80093
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Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.
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futility
imagination
dreams
cloud-cuckoo-land
irreality
phantasy
desires
wishful-thinking
wishes
irrationality
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Iain Pears |
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507b6af
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The vision people hold of the world to come is but a reflection, with predictable wishful distortions, of the world in which they live.
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heaven
religion
wishful-thinking
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James Baldwin |
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0b03a45
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Washington's incessant need for NEW assessments testifies to uncertainty in the capital.
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objectivity
wishful-thinking
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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873cf1f
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I don't believe in magic, yet I see making wishes as a nod to hope, an acknowledgement of the power of will, the recognition of a goal.
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magic
wishes-quotes
wishful-thinking
wish
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Cecelia Ahern |
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9e90f45
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I have too many wishes and feel that none of them are within my reach. But I also believe that the moment we're beyond wishes is either the moment we're truly happy, or the moment to give up
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wishes-quotes
wishful-thinking
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Cecelia Ahern |