E-Ei  •
El-Ev  •
F-Fl  •

Fo-Fu

•  G-Gan
•  Gar-Gl
•  Go-Gra

G W Foote
Freethought writer who co-wrote Infidel Death-Beds with A D McLaren

Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit...
     When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being.... We attack not a person but a belief, not a binge but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.
-- G W Foote, "Who are the Blasphemers?" in Flowers of Freethought

Refer me to one Atheist who denies the existence of God.... Etymologically, as well as philosophically, an ATheist is one without God. That is all the "A" before "Theist" really means.
-- G W Foote, What Is Agnosticism (London, 1902), quoted from George H Smith, "Defining Atheism," in Atheism, Ayn Rand, and other Heresies

The Rev Dr. James A Forbes, Jr
Riverside Church, New York City

Proclaim a theology of divine righteousness which demands justice, respect, tolerance, compassion, inclusiveness, trust in the ultimate efficacy of divine zeal, and the rigorous pursuit of peace in the midst of competing interests and faith claims.
-- Rev James Forbes, the basis of his sermon for the Fundamentalism Education Project's conference, "Fundamentalism's Threat to Democracy: Christians, Jews and Muslims Respond." in Houston, Texas (August 19, 2002)

E M [Edward Morgan] Forster (1879-1970)
English novelist whose final literary work, A Passage To India, was published in 1924, a full 46 years before he died; the epithet Fosterian, meaning, liberal, unconventional, sceptical, and moral, originated in the New York Nation in 1938 and reflected his concern for individual liberty

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible.... I do not believe in it for its own sake at all.
-- E M Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy (1951), quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Sudden conversion ... is particularly attractive to the half-baked mind.
-- E M Forster, Howards End (1910), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Insulting Quotations

So Two Cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
-- E M Forster, Two Cheers For Democracy (1951), excerpted with thanks from Pegasos – A literature related site in Finland

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
-- E M Forster, Two Cheers For Democracy (1951), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the State, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.
-- E M Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927); excerpted with thanks from Pegasos – A literature related site in Finland

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.
-- E M Forster, in A Passage to India (1924), obliquely explaining why there are other things much more important to him than writing; excerpted with thanks from Pegasos – A literature related site in Finland

Roger Fouts
American child psychologist who ended up instead becoming a primatologist and working for 30 years teaching chimpanzees various forms of symbolic communication (mostly sign language)

The fact that all our ape cousins -- chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans -- can acquire signs -- is powerful evidence that our hominid ancestors' first language was gestural and that the vocal version of language was a relatively recent development. My own guess is that vocal language began emerging about 200,000 years ago.
-- Roger Fouts, in an interview, The Chimpanzee And Human Communication Institute, "A Conversation With Roger Fouts Author of Next of Kin"

The chimps love holidays -- in fact Tatu actually anticipates them and asks about them.
-- Roger Fouts, in an interview, The Chimpanzee And Human Communication Institute, "A Conversation With Roger Fouts Author of Next of Kin"

Chimpanzee intelligence is an adaptation for their ecological niche. In other words it is an intelligence that suits their survival very well. Chimpanzees are geniuses at reading nonverbal communication. They can spot a sucker a mile off and exploit him to great advantage. This kind of social intelligence make a great deal of sense if you are the type of critter that is born into a small and relatively closed community and may spend 60 years living with the same people. You are going to get to know each other very well, and you had better if you are going to survive. Our own intelligence has this to a degree as well, but we have moved toward an intelligence that I would characterize as causal, logical -- in other words, the ability to solve problems in our heads. Chimps can do this as well, but not to the degree that we do it. On the other hand we can't read nonverbal behavior as well as a chimpanzee can. So we have grown out of touch with our bodies, and have tried to exist primarily in our minds, whereas the chimpanzees use both of these well.
-- Roger Fouts, in an interview, The Chimpanzee And Human Communication Institute, "A Conversation With Roger Fouts Author of Next of Kin"

They [chimpanzees] have all the same emotions that we do. This is not surprising since our emotions arise from our limbic system and that is the oldest part of our brain--sometimes called the "reptilian brain". I have seen them express joy, sadness and compassion. Eighteen years ago I watched Washoe mourn the loss of her baby; she was so depressed we thought she would grieve herself to death. Which by the way did happen to a wild chimpanzee named Flint who Jane Goodall studied. When Flint's mother, Flo, died he mourned himself to death. Perhaps the most important emotion chimpanzees share with us is suffering when they are isolated and separated from their friends and family. One day we will appreciate this and then we will stop locking them up in tiny cages for decades at a time.
-- Roger Fouts, in an interview, The Chimpanzee And Human Communication Institute, "A Conversation With Roger Fouts Author of Next of Kin"

Proper science is done by carefully designing your experiment and making sure there are no confounds in the design. That has nothing to do with loving and respecting your subject. Some scientists -- perhaps too many scientists -- think they must objectify their research subject. So this means that they must not feel sympathy, or empathy, animals. In my view they are dissociating themselves intentionally from their own feelings. When that happens unintentionally outside of science we call it psychosis. But scientists are rewarded for denying emotions and viewing animals as they would a machine.... That doesn't seem very scientific to me or even in touch with reality. I believe scientists should be in touch with their feelings of compassion. We should not be training our school children to suppress emotion in the name of science.
-- Roger Fouts, in an interview, The Chimpanzee And Human Communication Institute, "A Conversation With Roger Fouts Author of Next of Kin"

The "need" argument is a very dangerous one. If we justify everything we did on the basis of need, then would I be justified in cutting out my neighbor's heart if I needed it to save my daughter's life. This type of justification is used in the case of chimpanzees because they are a different species from us--in other words they are genetically different. But biologically speaking there are no distinct lines between species; they are just fuzzy categories....
     With regard to the alternatives, we already have them. The cellular and genetic lines of research in humans are the most promising. AIDS is caused by a virus, so it makes sense to study the virus, not chimpanzees. We have learned virtually nothing about AIDS from the chimpanzee. Every major advance in AIDS research ... has come from human studies.
-- Roger Fouts, in an interview, The Chimpanzee And Human Communication Institute, "A Conversation With Roger Fouts Author of Next of Kin"

Growing up on a farm taught me a reverence for all forms of life. We were a large and poor farm family, so that meant that we had to kill and eat our animal friends. When you do that you are aware of the sacrifice that someone is making so that you may live. My mother always made sure we were thankful for those precious gifts.
-- Roger Fouts, in an interview, The Chimpanzee And Human Communication Institute, "A Conversation With Roger Fouts Author of Next of Kin"

Washoe [the chimpanzee (and friend for over 30 years)] has taught me that we are both a part of the natural world we share with all our fellow animals. She has taught me that personhood is something we share, and that personhood goes beyond species classifications. She has taught me that human arrogance is very lethal to our fellow beings on this planet, especially when it is combined with human ignorance. She has taught methat the most profound scientific discoveries are often based on the most humble approach. She has taught me that compassion is one of our dearest traits, and that we should value it above all others, including intelligence. She helped me to realize that if we humans do not embrace and respect our fellow species on this planet, then we stand a good chance of destroying the whole thing.
-- Roger Fouts, in an interview, The Chimpanzee And Human Communication Institute, "A Conversation With Roger Fouts Author of Next of Kin"

John Fowles (1926-2005)
English novelist, poet, essayist

Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation.
-- John Fowles, quoted in The New York Times Book Review (May 31, 1998), quoted from Freedom From Religion Foundation

Anatole France [Jacques Anatole Thibault] (1844-1924)
French Nobel Prize-winning writer

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.
-- Anatole France, The Revolt of the Angels, 1944, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Razelle Frankl
American writer

A country dominated by televangelism would be unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers, who envisioned religion as personal and spiritual, not social and political. No particular variety of religion was intended to control the political agenda, to set the community's moral tone or to judge who are the true believers and members of our society. But this is precisely the objective of the electric church.
-- Razelle Frankl, Televangelism (1987), quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

Victor Frankl (1905-1997)
Austrian psychiatrist and social activist

Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
-- Victor Frankl, The Will To Meaning, thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief"

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
American public official, writer, scientist, and printer who played a major part in the American Revolution

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
-- Benjamin Franklin, letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780, quoted from Adrienne Koch, ed, The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 93.

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your Candle.
-- Benjamin Franklin, the incompatibility of faith and reason, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758)

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
-- Benjamin Franklin, quoted from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (2001)

Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so; It is not so. It is so; it is not so.
-- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1743

If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England.
-- Benjamin Franklin, An Essay on Toleration

Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.
-- Benjamin Franklin (attributed: source unknown)

He [the Rev Mr. Whitefield] used, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard.
-- Benjamin Franklin, from Franklin's Autobiography

[Excerpt]:
"A little Religion, and a little Honesty, goes a great way in Courts."
-- Benjamin Franklin, comparing the politicized clergyman with the regular clergyman, a thing which a few have ventured to do in recent times (Ahem!), quoted in The New England Currant (July 23, 1722), "Silence Dogood, No. 9; Corruptio optimi est pessima." quoted from The History Carper

[Excerpt]:
"But the most dangerous Hypocrite in a Common-Wealth, is one who leaves the Gospel for the sake of the Law: A Man compounded of Law and Gospel, is able to cheat a whole Country with his Religion, and then destroy them under Colour of Law: And here the Clergy are in great Danger of being deceiv'd, and the People of being deceiv'd by the Clergy, until the Monster arrives to such Power and Wealth, that he is out of the reach of both, and can oppress the People without their own blind Assistance."
-- Benjamin Franklin, comparing the politicized clergyman with the regular clergyman, a thing which a few have ventured to do in recent times (Ahem!), quoted in The New England Currant (July 23, 1722), "Silence Dogood, No. 9; Corruptio optimi est pessima." quoted from The History Carper, thanks to Ben for the tip!

[Passage]:
"This Political Description of a Hypocrite, may (for ought I know) be taken for a new Doctrine by some of your Readers; but let them consider, that a little Religion, and a little Honesty, goes a great way in Courts. 'Tis not inconsistent with Charity to distrust a Religious Man in Power, tho' he may be a good Man; he has many Temptations "to propagate publick Destruction for Personal Advantages and Security:" And if his Natural Temper be covetous, and his Actions often contradict his pious Discourse, we may with great Reason conclude, that he has some other Design in his Religion besides barely getting to Heaven.
     "But the most dangerous Hypocrite in a Common-Wealth, is one who leaves the Gospel for the sake of the Law: A Man compounded of Law and Gospel, is able to cheat a whole Country with his Religion, and then destroy them under Colour of Law: And here the Clergy are in great Danger of being deceiv'd, and the People of being deceiv'd by the Clergy, until the Monster arrives to such Power and Wealth, that he is out of the reach of both, and can oppress the People without their own blind Assistance.
     "And it is a sad Observation, that when the People too late see their Error, yet the Clergy still persist in their Encomiums on the Hypocrite; and when he happens to die for the Good of his Country, without leaving behind him the Memory of one good Action, he shall be sure to have his Funeral Sermon stuff'd with Pious Expressions which he dropt at such a Time, and at such a Place, and on such an Occasion; than which nothing can be more prejudicial to the Interest of Religion, nor indeed to the Memory of the Person deceas'd. The Reason of this Blindness in the Clergy is, because they are honourably supported (as they ought to be) by their People, and see nor feel nothing of the Oppression which is obvious and burdensome to every one else."
-- Benjamin Franklin, comparing the politicized clergyman with the regular clergyman, a thing which a few have ventured to do in recent times (Ahem!), quoted in The New England Currant (July 23, 1722), "Silence Dogood, No. 9; Corruptio optimi est pessima." quoted from The History Carper, critical editing for readability and PAM Style Sheet conformity is ©2003 Cliff Walker

Indeed, when religious people quarrel about religion, or hungry people quarrel about victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.
-- Benjamin Franklin quoted joseph Joseph Lewis, "Benjamin Franklin -- Freethinker"

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
-- Benjamin Franklin (attributed: source unknown)

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania. "This sentence was much used in the Revolutionary period. It occurs even so early as November, 1755, in an answer by the Assembly of Pennsylvania to the Governor, and forms the motto of Franklin's 'Historical Review,' 1759, appearing also in the body of the work." -- Frothingham: Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 413.

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
-- Benjamin Franklin (attributed: source unknown)

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.
-- Benjamin Franklin (attributed: source unknown)

We must hang together, gentlemen ... else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.
-- Benjamin Franklin (attributed: source unknown)

Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941)
Scottish anthropologist, folklorist, and classicist who examined the importance of magic, religion, and science to the development of human thought in his most famous work, The Golden Bough (1890)

Some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos of a familiar type thinly disguised as commands of the Deity.
-- James Frazer, quoted from Joseph Lewis, The Ten Commandments (p. 612)

In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary.
-- James Frazer, The Golden Bough, preface

Much which we are wont to regard as solid rests on the sands of superstition rather than on the rock of nature. It is indeed a melancholy and in some respects thankless task to strike at the foundations of beliefs in which, as in a strong tower, the hopes and aspirations of humanity through long ages have sought refuge from the storm and stress of life. Yet sooner or later it is inevitable that the battery of the comparative method should breach these venerable walls, mantled over with the ivy and moss and wild flowers of a thousand tender and sacred associations. At present we are only dragging the guns into position; they have hardly yet begun to speak. The task of building up into fairier and more enduring forms the old structures so rudely shattered is reserved for other hands, perhaps for other and happier ages. We cannot foresee, we can hardly even guess, the new forms into which thought and society will run in the future. Yet this uncertainty ought not to induce us, from any consideration of expediency or regard for antiquity, to spare the ancient moulds, however beautiful, when these are proven to be outworn. Whatever comes of it, wherever it leads, we must follow the truth alone. It is our guiding star.
-- James Frazer, quoted from Joseph Lewis, The Ten Commandments (Epilogue), except the first sentence, which was quoted from Victor J Stenger, Physics and Pychics

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
-- James Frazer, The Golden Bough, ch. 18 (1922 ed.)

Frederick II [Frederick the Great] (1740-1786)
King of of Prussia, close friend of Voltaire

Theologians are all alike, of whatever religion or country they may be; their aim is always to wield despotic authority over men's consciences; they therefore persecute all of us who have the temerity to tell the truth.
-- Frederick the Great, letter to Voltaire (3 November 1736), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Insulting Quotations

Religion is the idol of the mob: it adores everything it does not understand.
-- Frederick the Great, letter to Voltaire (6 July 1737), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

All religions must be tolerated ... every man must go to heaven in his own way. [Die Religionen müssen alle toleriert werden ... denn hier muss ein jeder nach seiner Fasson selig werden.]
-- Frederick the Great, note to the Religious Department, June 22, 1740, from Daniel B Baker, ed, Political Quotations (1990), quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, "Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church"

The truth is always the strongest argument. Sophocles Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time.
-- Frederick the Great, quoted from Cyber-Nation

Philip Freneau (1752-1832)
American author

If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower
-- Philip Freneau, "The Wild Honey Suckle"

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Austrian psychiatrist

     • Freud Never Said This

Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.
-- Sigmund Freud, letter to Charles Singer, quoted from James A Haught, "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996)

Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.
-- Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, ch. 8 (1927; repr. in Complete Works, vol. 21, ed. by James Strachey and Anna Freud, 1961). Two paragraphs earlier, Freud called religion "the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity," arising, "like the obsessional neuroses of children ... out of the Oedipus complex," though he never actually used the words -- often quoted in anthologies -- "Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis." Quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations.

The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.
-- Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, pt. 4, sct. 6

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
-- Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions; by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.
-- Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927), quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations (1999)

In the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is only too palpable.
-- Sigmund Freud (attributed: source unknown)

The rest of our enquiry is made easy because this God-Creator is openly called Father. Psycho-analysis concludes that he really is the father, clothed in the grandeur in which he once appeared to the small child.
-- Sigmund Freud, "A Philosophy of Life" Lecture XXXV (1932)

Religion is an illusion ... it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our intellectual desires.
-- Sigmund Freud, quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

Freud never said this:

"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."
-- Complete Fabrication: appearing on many atheistic quotes lists, but Sigmund Freud never said this as far as we can tell

Carl Joachim Friedrich (b. 1901)
Political Scientist, former president of the American Political Science Association

[Counterfeit tolerance includes] the opportunism of one who seeks, or accepts, tolerance for himself, as a minority, but who would deny it to others if ever he should be in a position to grant it.
-- Carl J Friedrich, The New Belief In The Common Man (1942), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief"

Erich Fromm (1900-1980)
American psychologist

If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.
-- Erich Fromm, Man for Himself, 1947, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as "moral indignation," which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
-- Eric Fromm, Man For Himself (1974), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief"

Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963)
American poet

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
     On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
     Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
     Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
     And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
 
What had that flower to do with being white,
     The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
     Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall? --
     If design govern in a thing so small
-- Robert Frost, "Design"

Anything more than the truth would be too much.
-- Robert Frost (attributed: source unknown)

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
-- Robert Frost, In the Clearing "Cluster of Faith" (1962), quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations (1999)

James Anthony Froude (1818-1894)
British historian whose writings emphasized the role of the individual in history; ordained a Deacon, he latermet Thomas Carlyle, subsequently developed strong anti-clerical sentiments, and eventually withdrew from the ministry

I have long been convinced that the Christian Eucharist is but a continuation of the Eleusinian mysteries. St Paul, in using the word teleiois, almost confirms this.
-- James Anthony Froude, letter to Prof. Johnson, of England, quoted from John E Remsberg, The Christ, p. 404

Herman Northrop Frye (1912-91)
Canadian literary critic

Culture's essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object.
-- Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, second essay, "Anagogic Phase: Symbol as Monad" (1957), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Between religion's "this is" and poetry's "but suppose this is," there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.
-- Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, second essay, "Anagogic Phase: Symbol as Monad" (1957), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.
-- Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Essay 2, "Literal and Descriptive Phases" (1957), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.
-- Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Third Essay, "Theory of Archetypal Meaning" (1957), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

The Bible should be taught so early and so thoroughly that it sinks straight to the bottom of the mind where everything that comes along can settle on it.
-- Northrop Frye, quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

J William Fulbright (1905-1995)
United States Representative (1944), and Senator (1945-1974), from Arkansas; initiated the world-renowned Fulbright Act (1946), opening the door to the exchange of students and teachers between the US and other countries; among the very first to dispraise Senator Joseph McCarthy’s antiatheistic bigotry through a series of destructive investigations of famous people into their supposed Communistic influence in the US; instrumental in bringing about Senator McCarthy’s downfall

It is a curiosity of human nature that lack of self-assurance seems to breed an exaggerated sense of power and mission.
-- J William Fulbright, in, The Arrogance Of Power (1966), thanks to Laird Wilcox, ed, "The Degeneration of Belief"

I think we Americans tend to put too high a price on unanimity ... as if there were something dangerous and illegitimate about honest differences of opinion honestly expressed by honest men.
-- J William Fulbright, Senate Speech (October 22, 1965)

In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects.
-- J William Fulbright, Speech (April 21, 1966)

We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about "unthinkable things" because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.
-- J William Fulbright, quoted from Floyd College, Rome, Georgia, "Banned Books -- Quotes"

If America has a service to perform in the world -- and I believe it has -- it is in large part the service of its own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest. This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said: "Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."
-- J William Fulbright, arguing against involvement in the Vietnam War and in favor of minding our own business, in, The Arrogance Of Power (1966)

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
American writer

You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.
-- Margaret Fuller, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

R Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
American inventor, engineer, architect, philosopher

Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is quite staggering.
-- Bucky Fuller, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

Here is God's purpose --
for God, to me, it seems,
is a verb,
not a noun,
proper or improper.
-- Bucky Fuller, No More Secondhand God "Untitled" (1963), quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations (1999)

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.
-- Bucky Fuller, in Playboy magazine (1972), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

Zelotes Fuller

The past history of the Christian Church should be a solemn warning to us never to permit an alliance to be formed between the priesthood and the civil magistracy -- between Church and State powers.
-- Zelotes Fuller, from Joseph Blau, Cornerstones of Religious Freedom in America (1949), quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

The Subtle Fulmination of the Encircled Sea

Please Feel Free
to Grab a Quote
(or Maybe Three)

Grab some quotes to embellish your web site,
to use as filler for your group's newsletter,
or to add force to your Letters to the Editor.

Use them to introduce the chapters of a book or
accent the index or margins of a special project.

Poster your wall!    Graffiti your (own) fence.
Sticker your car!!
Poster your wall.    Graffiti your (own) fence!!!

That's what this list is for!
That's why I made it!

In using this resource, however, keep in mind that
it's someone's life's work, a hedge against old age.

If you decide to build your own online
collection, then find some new material!
Dig up quips that haven't yet been posted!

There's something to be said
for doing your own work.