“Goodness me! Humans don't go to heaven! No, someone made that up to prevent you all from going nuts!”
Kryten the robot butler in the Red Dwarf episode "Last Day" (as a side note, Kryten firmly believes in a "silicon heaven" for everything from robots to calculators to toasters)
“Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing?... What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?... If you have anything better to be doing when you are overtaken, get to work on that."
Epictetus, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go
"Looking for fish? Don’t climb a tree."
Chinese proverb (according to "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail March 31 2011
“A ship is safe in the port, but that is not what a ship is for.”
Author unknown
“One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing.”
C.S. Lewis God in the Dock
In my latest National Post column, I point to a Page One story in Monday's paper about children with three genetic parents to underline my warning, in the print edition that same day, that scenarios we thought we might wrestle with ethically in the future are here now. Yet we seem unready to wrestle, even unable to.
“No one is better placed to resist pressure than the person who knows he can’t give in to it.”
Conor Cruise O’Brien The Siege
“Leaders have two characteristics: (1) they are going somewhere; (2) they can persuade others to go with them.”
D.P. Diffiné, “The 1993 American Incentive System Almanac”.