Life is a near-death experience.
George CarlinRead
You know something I could really do without? The Space Shuttle. ... It's irresponsible. The last thing we should be doing is sending our grotesquely distorted DNA out into space.
Interpretation
George Carlin critiques the idea of space exploration by highlighting the risks of sending humanity's flaws into the universe.
In this quote, George Carlin expresses his skepticism about space exploration, particularly the Space Shuttle program, by stating that humanity's imperfections should not be sent into space. He suggests that rather than reaching for the stars, we should focus on improving ourselves and addressing the issues that distort our very nature, implying that space travel may exacerbate rather than alleviate our flaws.
In practice
Using this quote to spark a discussion on the ethical implications of space exploration at a science symposium.
Life is a near-death experience.
Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car."
If you've got a cat and a leg, you've got a happy cat. If you've got a cat and two legs, you've got a party.
This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.
Some people try to get out of jury duty by lying. You don't have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you'd make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people.
Intelligence tests are biased toward the literate.
You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain.
…the samurai ethic is a political science of the heart, designed to control such discouragement and fatigue in order to avoid showing them to others. It was thought more important to look healthy than to be healthy, and more important to seem bold and daring than to be so. This view of morality, since it is physiologically based on the special vanity peculiar to men, is perhaps the supreme male view of morality.
As long as you seek for something, you will get the shadow of reality and not reality itself.
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
Humans arose ... as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.
My perception has changed from thinking if someone's in jail they're supposed to be, to there's a lot of factors that's not that simple.
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