Good one liners

1. Conscience --- the little voice of morality thatyou wish had a body so you could punch it in the nose.

2. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced,you can't be promoted.

3. There is a fine line between "hobby" and "mentalillness."

4. Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include afree trip around the sun every year.

5. Christians--- People who follow Jesus, althoughthey disagree on which way He went.

6. Our opinion of people depends less upon what we seein them, than upon what they make us see in ourselves.

7. Can you confuse an open mind with one that is justvacant?

8. Isn't philosophy just a battle against thebewitchment of our intelligence by means of language?

9. It is one of the most beautiful compensations oflife, that no man can sincerely try to help anotherwithout helping himself. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

10. Learning is finding out what you already know.Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching isreminding others that they know it just as well asyou.

11. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

12. Never approach a bull from the front, a horse fromthe rear, or a fool from any direction.

13. Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

14. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy thescenery on a detour.

15. If all the world is a stage, where is the audiencesitting?

16. If your mind goes blank, don't forget to turn offthe sound.

17. The closest anyone comes to perfection is when heor she fills out a job application form.

18. One of the symptoms of an approaching nervousbreakdown is the belief that one's work is terriblyimportant. - Bertrand Russell

19. You take your life in your own hands, and whathappens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

20. To kill time is not murder, it's suicide. -William James.

21. Good teachers are the ones who can challenge youngminds without losing their own.

22. I am careful not to confuse excellence withperfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection isGod's business.

23. Success is more attitude than aptitude.

24. When a pastor asked the class, "Why was Jesus bornin Bethlehem?" a boy raised his hand and replied,"Because his mother was there."

25. The greatest good you can do for another is notjust share your riches, but reveal to them their own."- Benjamin Disraeli

26. Why do the same people who laugh at sciencefictionlisten to weather forecasts and economists?

27. I've learned that I don't suffer from insanity, Ienjoy it.

28. Shallow men believe in luck, Strong men believe incause and effect. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

29. The power of man has grown in every sphere, exceptover himself.”

30. We are all worms. But I believe that I am aglow-worm.

31. All through my childhood I prayed to God for a newbike, but did not get it. Later I understod that thatsnot how God works. So I stole abike and asked forforgivance.

32. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

33. Tell me, and I'll forget. Show me, and I'llremember. Involve me, and I'll learn."

34. I never see failure as failure, but only as thegame I must play to win.

35. Skill is successfully walking a tightrope overNiagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying.

36. It doesn't matter how much milk you spill as longas you don't lose the cow.

37. A weakness is often a strength inappropriatelyapplied.

38. Middle age is when broadness of the mind andnarrowness of the waist change places.

39. Loving people live in a loving world. Hostilepeople live in a hostile world. Same world.--

40. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion thatlife is serious.

41. A lie can travel halfway around the world whilethe truth is putting on its shoes." - Mark Twain

42. Love your enemies; it will drive them nuts.

43. Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it mayhave a meaning of which I disapprove.

44. The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fireto be kindled.

45. Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Wherehave I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This isgoing to take more than one night."

46. My opinions may have changed, but not the factthat I am right.

47. A great many people think they are thinking whenthey are merely rearranging their prejudices.

48. The trouble with life is there's no backgroundmusic.

49. To change everything...simply change yourattitude.

50. Do you always want to be right, or do you want tobe happy?

51. Every day we are given stones. What do we buildwith them? A bridge, or a wall?

52. You wouldn't be worried about what people think ofyou if you knew how seldom they actually do.

53. When confronted with a Goliath-size problem, whichway do you respond-- "He's too big to hit", or "He'stoo big to miss"?

54. Life is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy thetrip!

55. The biggest lie on the planet: "When I get what Iwant, I will be happy."

56. If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanistseat?

57. Defeat isn't bitter, as long as you don't swallowit.

58. I always wanted to be somebody, but I should havebeen more specific.

59. You know, I spent a fortune on deodorant ~ beforeI realised that people didn't like me anyway.

60. I've learned....That life is tough, but I'mtougher.

61. The human race has one really effective weapon,and that is laughter. --Mark Twain

62. Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects

63. Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads

64. Insanity is my only means of relaxation.

65. If you can remain calm, you just don't have all the facts.

66. No sense being pessimistic, it probably wouldn't work anyway

67. Most problems are not created or solved; they only change appearances

68. There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.

69. You don't have to blow out the other fellow's light to let your own shine.

70. An optimist is somebody who always sees the bright side of your problem.

71. TEACHER to Little Jimmy, "why do you always get so dirty?"; "Little Jimmy, "I'm a lot closer to the ground then you are."

72. The best way to predict the future is to create it!

73. Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

74. I went out to find a friend, But couldn't not find one there. I went out to be a friend, And friends were everywhere.

75. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, for they are sticking to their diets.

76. Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness. ~Chinese Proverb

77. Usually our criticism of others is not because they have faults, but because their faults are different from ours.

78. What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half hour? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

79. A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." ~William James

80. Good words are worth much, and cost little.

81. After a certain age, if you don't wake up aching in every joint, you are probably dead.

82. A pessimist is someone who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.

83. You’re not a complete idiot. There are still some parts missing!

84. If swimming is so good for your figure, how do you explain whales?

85. Upper Crust: a bunch of crumbs stuck together with a lot of dough.

86. The brightest things you ever say are those you think about the next day.

87. Nothing else ruins the truth like stretching it.

88. Man can live without air for seconds, without water for days, without food for weeks, and without ideas for years.

89. Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy

90. Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

91. It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument

92. Remember, that NOT getting what you want is sometimes a stroke of good luck.

93. Joy is not in things! It is in us!

94. The best way to escape your problem is to solve it.

95. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

96. It's hard to make a come back when you haven't been anywhere.

97. All reports are in; life is now officially unfair.

98. I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.

99. janami dharmam na cha me pravrutthih janamyadharmam na cha me nivrutthih |
kenaapi devena hrudhisthithena yatha niyuktosmi thatha karomi ||

I'm not bossy, I just know what you should be doing.

My idea of a team effort is a lot of people doing whatever I say.

If you drink, don't park. Accidents cause people.

Inside every large program is a small program trying to get out.

Beer is now cheaper than gas. Drink, don't drive!

People who think they know it all really annoy those of us who do.

I have a perfect body. It's your vision that's defective.

Well, at least the war on the environment is going well.

Churches only worship the prophet margin.

Don't believe everything you think.

Without geometry, life is pointless.

Stable relationships are for horses.

Just say NO to negativity.

I thought I was indecisive; now I'm not so sure.

I've heard about the evils of drinking beer, so I gave up reading.

Beer doesn't make you fat. It makes you lean

I'm not saying you're a monkey, but take this banana and scram.

The winner of the rat race is still a rat.

I love animals. They're delicious.

I didn't climb to the top of the food chain to become a vegetarian!

Kids in the back seat cause accidents; Accidents in the back seat cause kids.

Money is the root of all evil. For more information, send $10 to me.

If you observe this vehicle being operated in an unsafe manner, please try to

think of it as one more anomoly in the cosmic order.

I didn't believe in reincarnation in my last life, either!

Life is too short to worry about how short life is.

Excess is never too much in moderation.

Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it's the scenic route.

Help your local Search & Rescue. Get lost!

The generation of random numbers is too important to leave to chance.

Say "NO" to drugs. That will bring the prices down.

An Apple a day keeps Windows away.

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the

Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

The control key on the keyboard does not work.

Jesus loves you! Everybody else thinks you're a jerk.

People like you are the reason people like me need medication.

Every time you open your mouth, some idiot starts talking.

The box said Windows 2000 or better. So I installed Linux.

Use the best: Linux for servers, Mac for graphics, Windows for Solitaire.

Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. So study hard and be evil.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.

Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

To err is human, to blame it on somebody else shows management potential.

Suburbia: Where they tear out the trees and name streets after them.

All men are idiots, and I married their King.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.

The trouble with life is there's no background music.

Quoting one is plagiarism. Quoting many is research.

Warning: Dates on calendar are closer than they appear.

I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood for 30 years.

Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you weren't asleep.

I just want revenge. Is that so wrong?

I'm supposed to back up my hard drive, but how do I put it into reverse?

Chaos, panic, and disorder - my work here is done.

Is it time for your medication or mine?

Getting on your feet means getting off your butt.

I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert.

If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen.

Love may be blind, but marriage is a real eye opener.

To err is human, to forgive divine. Neither is government policy.

My mother is a travel agent for guilt trips.

(Spotted on a passing motorcycle): If you can read this, my wife fell off!

I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes.

First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

If going to church makes you a Christian, does going into a garage make you a

car?

In America, anyone can be president. That's one of the risks you take.

Some people are only alive because it is illegal to shoot them.

So you're a feminist. Isn't that cute?

The more you complain the longer God makes you live.

Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.

As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public schools.

Life would be easier if I had the source code.

God must love stupid people. He made SO many.

I said "no" to drugs, but they didn't listen.

I took an IQ test and the results were negative.

Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

If catapults are outlawed, only outlaws will have catapults.

It's lonely at the top, but you eat better.

Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.

God is my co-pilot, but the Devil is my bombardier.

I don't have a license to kill. I have a learner's permit.

EARTH FIRST! We'll strip-mine the other planets later.

My wife keeps complaining I never listen to her (or something like that).

If at first you don't succeed, call it version 1.0!

All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

Karaoke bars combine two of the nation's greatest evils: people who shouldn't

drink with people who shouldn't sing.

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

Watch out for the idiot behind me.

So you're kids no honor student. Society needs laborers.

Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.

I doubt, therefore I might be.

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those

who don't.

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once.

If it isn't broken, fix it until it is.

Thank God I'm an atheist.

Never knock on Death's door. Ring the bell and run, he hates that.

Jesus died for my sins and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Archaeologists will date any old thing.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Vegetarian: Indian word for lousy hunter.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Origin and Necessity of Religion

a. Evolution of the concept of God

Religion did not come into existence suddenly, but was evolutionary in nature. By evolution, I mean is the way majority of the society understood it has undergone evolution. (Just for the sake of understanding I have broken it down into different stages. But the whole evolution was much more gradual, and could not be strightly broken into stages)
People some times frown at the idea of Gods also evolving. But actually it is not god who is evolving, but our concept of god which is evolving. Child sees no thief in the world. But when he becomes a man, he starts seeing the world as good and bad. It is not that the world has changed, but the child’s concept of world has changed.
So if we see the early forms of religions, you mainly find two types.
1. Ancestor worship: Death is something which always puzzled the human mind. Man wants to keep the memory of his dead relatives, and think they are alive, or he himself does not want the death to be his end. Thus started the idea of ancestor worship or the ancestor worship. The big pyramids of Egypt are the standing testimonials of this idea.

2. Nature worship: Man has always tried to live in comfort, and time and again nature proved itself stronger than nature. So, the earlier tribal man saw the nature as something more powerful than himself. The dawn, the evening, the hurricane, the stupendous and gigantic forces of nature, its beauties, these have exercised the human mind, and it aspires to go beyond, to understand something about them. In the struggle they endow these phenomena with personal attributes, giving them souls and bodies, sometimes beautiful, sometimes transcendent. Every attempt ends by these phenomena becoming abstractions whether personalized or not. So also it is found with the ancient Greeks; their whole mythology is simply this abstracted nature worship.

In present India you find traces of both forms. But the early rig-veda samhita, you only find traces of nature worship. The forces of nature were endowed with personal attributes, and given names like Indra, Varuna (wind), Agni (fire) etc.

At the same time we know that these Devas were at first only powerful beings, nothing more. Most of you are horrified while reading that the ancient gods sometimes did things which, to us, are very repugnant. But when we read these books, we entirely forget that we are persons of the nineteenth century, and these gods were beings existing thousands of years ago. We also forget that the people who worshipped these gods found nothing incongruous in their characters, found nothing to frighten them, because they were very much like themselves. If drinking or molesting others wife is widely accepted in tribal society, their gods were also doing it.
The primitive man was a man of impulse. He did what occurred to him, and tried to bring out through his muscles whatever thought came into his mind, and he never stopped to judge, and seldom tried to check his impulses. So with the gods, they were also creatures of impulse. Indra comes and shatters the forces of the demons. Jehovah is pleased with one person and displeased with another, for what reason no one knows or asks. The habit of inquiry had not then arisen, and whatever he did was regarded as right. There was no idea of good or evil. The Devas did many wicked things in our sense of the word; again and again Indra and other gods committed very wicked deeds, but to the worshippers of Indra the ideas of wickedness and evil did not occur, so they did not question them.
But parallely, the humans slowly started coming together and formed groups. With this stated the concept of good of community before his own good. This helped in evolution of ethics (I will come to the reason for this phenomenon later). Now, when a glimpse of something higher, more ethical, dawned upon the intellect of mankind, the old gods were found to be incongruous — these boisterous, fighting, drinking, gods of the ancients

To this different nations reacted in different manners. In west, the old religions were rejected, and new religions formed. From Judaism developed the newer religions, which were more ethical etc etc. The old ones’ were throw out by the new ones. There were no longer these Egyptians, Greek gods. But India the attitude was different. They did not reject the old religion, but tried to give new meaning to the old ones. Thus retaining the form, but pouring new spirit in them.

They took a survey, as it were, of all the actions and qualities of the gods and discarded those which they could not harmonize, and kept those which they could understand, and combined them, labelling them with one name, Deva-deva, the God of gods. The god to be worshipped was no more a simple symbol of power; something more was required than that. He was an ethical god; he loved mankind, and did good to mankind. But the idea of god still remained. They increased his ethical significance, and increased also his power. He became the most ethical being in the universe, as well as almost almighty.

Hence new gods like Siva, Vishnu became powerful over the old gods (who now became chota gods) like Indra or Varuna. And the duty of these Gods is to protect the good, and destroy the evil. You can see that in Valmiki Ramayana, Rama was picturised as person protecting the good, and punishing the evil Ravana.

But then again, if God is all powerful, how come he has no power over the evil also. If Jehovah is all powerful, how can he still not control devil. So, they tried to bring in lila or wish of God.

Now the good and evil both being under God is fine, but why should evil still be there. Why should ppl suffer? Even if you see the posts by ppl earlier, it assumes that God is a “good” being. The idea and thinking of most ppl does not raise above the Good/Bad. They hence try to fit god too in the mould of Good and bad.

But if we think a little, we will soon understand that good and evil are not absolute, relative concepts- sides of the same coin. An additions somewhere is only at the cost of subtraction somewhere else. Darkness cannot exist without light, and light cannot be understood without darkness. To accept life is to accept death also. So, both were interdependent. One existing means the other also exists. It is in this context, I like the symbolism of the Kali’s image. In one hand she is holding skulls and symbolizing death, and with the other hand, she is giving boons. That’s the reality of the world. Good AND bad.

It is fine that good and evil are sides of same coin. But who is to decide which side one is. I can be son of a rich man, and you son of a poor man, and the world still a combination of both. So, how can we overcome this preference of inequality. It is exactly where the law-of-karma comes in. You are happy not because of the inequality in the view of God, but because of your own doing. And if you start being good, you can reap the benefits in the future. Hence the ideas of fate and God’s will is replaced by the idea of self-responsibility.

b. The motive force behind religion

Now what is the motive force working behind all these? What is that forces man to evolve the ideas of ethics? What is the force working that makes man to come up with different religious ideas?

In my view the idea of freedom is the most fundamental motive for everything that man does. Whether it is a man trying to earn lot of money, and being free from worldly problems or whether it is the man aiming for eternal heaven, and trying to be free from the death or whether it is the man aiming for Gods grace and be free from the misery or whether it is the man trying for moksha and be free from the cycle of birth and death, all are trying to express this same concept of freedom. His understanding of the means to freedom may differ, but not the motive.

In my opinion if there is any difference between a man and a child, it is not in what they want to express, but the clarity with which they can express their idea. The early man seeing the apple fall thought there was a demon there, invisible, which is trying to pull the apple down. He did not have the mathematics to explain it clearly like Newton. But it is the same idea of gravity that he was trying to express, but only in a crude manner. In the same way, it is the same idea of freedom that the man has been trying to explain, may be in a crude manner. But still the idea is the same.

Apart from the consideration of tie question how far these facts claimed by religions are true, we find one characteristic common to them all. They are all abstractions as contrasted with the concrete discoveries of physics, for instance; and in all the highly organised religions they take the purest form of Unit Abstraction, either in the form of an Abstracted Presence, as an Omnipresent Being, as an Abstract Personality called God, as a Moral Law, or in the form of an Abstract Essence underlying every existence. In modern times, too, the attempts made to preach religions without appealing to the super-sensuous state if the mind have had to take up the old abstractions of the Ancients and give different names to them as "Moral Law", the "Ideal Unity", and so forth, thus showing that these abstractions are not in the senses. None of us have yet seen an "Ideal Human Being", and yet we are told to believe in it. None of us have yet seen an ideally perfect man, and yet without that ideal we cannot progress.

Thus, this one fact stands out from all these different religions, that there is an Ideal Unit Abstraction, which is put before us, either in the form of a Person or an Impersonal Being, or a Law, or a Presence, or an Essence. We are always struggling to raise ourselves up to that ideal. Every human being, whosoever and wheresoever he may be, has an ideal of infinite power. Every human being has an ideal of infinite pleasure. Most of the works that we find around us, the activities displayed everywhere, are due to the struggle for this infinite power or this infinite pleasure. This struggle for perfection, for perfect harmony etc forms the basis of ethics.

c. The Necessity of religion

When may then ask, fine with the old ideas of motives behind the religion, but why do we need to still continue with these ideas of religion.

1. Firstly, no matter how much we talk we have to accept the reality that 99% ppl on earth DO continue to believe in God, inspite of all what we talk

2. Also, we are here talking about evolution of religious ideas on the society scale. This took for thousands of years. But the same and probably much more growth took place in the Prophets/Saints in just one life time. A child develops so in just 9 months, for what took millions of years for the humans to develop on a whole. The same way, eventhough the total society grows at a much slower rate, an individual can accelerate this evolution to reach perfection. Conscious effort to accelerate this journey towards perfection is what is called religious life.

3. So while talking of the society as a whole, we have to take the whole of the society into consideration, and not ones’ individual standards into account. Most ppl in the society have still not outgrown the ideas of forms and concrete stuff. So it is very natural that the man indulges in rituals, and clings to a higher power

4. Some ppl talk of terms like ‘spiritual but not religious’ or ‘religious humanism’. But it entirely one sided, for what deals with the study of spirit if not religion. Are we born where we start listening to our conscience? No we are trained to listen to our conscience. Can a tribal boy be able to listen to his conscience? No, he only listens to his impulses. Then what is the difference between a tribal man and a civilized man. It is his ability to listen to the voice of his conscience. But how did this develop? It is only by religions training. We are told from our childhood different ideas of self-discipline and self-control. Later we outgrow all the forms, and start ridiculing the forms and rituals. But we forget that it is only trough the concrete that we could go beyond concrete, and think of abstract. Accepted, organized religion has its own limitations, but the ideal should not be to thus destroy whole of it, but to reform it.

5. Thus, apart from the solid facts and truths that we may learn from religion, religion, as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have. This pursuit of the Infinite, this struggle to grasp the Infinite, this effort to get beyond the limitations of the senses — out of matter, as it were — and to evolve the spiritual man — this striving day and night to make the Infinite one with our being — this struggle itself is the grandest and most glorious that man can make. Some persons find the greatest pleasure in eating. We have no right to say that they should not. Others find the greatest pleasure in possessing certain things. We have no right to say that they should not. But they also have no right to say "no" to the man who finds his highest pleasure in spiritual thought. The lower the organization, the greater the pleasure in the senses. Very few men can eat a meal with the same gusto as a dog or a wolf. But all the pleasures of the dog or the wolf have gone, as it were into the senses. The lower types of humanity in all nations find pleasure in the senses, while the cultured and the educated find it in thought, in philosophy, in arts and sciences. Spirituality is a still higher plane. The subject being infinite, that plane is the highest, and the pleasure there is the highest for those who can appreciate it. So, even on the utilitarian ground that man is to seek for pleasure, he should cultivate religious thought, for it is the highest pleasure that exists. Thus religion, as a study, seems to me to be absolutely necessary.

6. Man is man so long as he is struggling to rise above nature, and this nature is both internal and external. Not only does it comprise the laws that govern the particles of matter outside us and in our bodies, but also the more subtle nature within, which is, in fact, the motive power governing the external. It is good and very grand to conquer external nature, but grander still to conquer our internal nature. It is grand and good to know the laws that govern the stars and planets; it is infinitely grander and better to know the laws that govern the passions, the feelings, the will, of mankind. This conquering of the inner man, understanding the secrets of the subtle workings that are within the human mind, and knowing its wonderful secrets, belong entirely to religion, for religion does not presume perfection, but longing for perfection.