#scienc

...observe the difference between your attitude to illusions and mine. You have to defend the religious illusion with all your might. If it becomes discredited - and indeed the threat to it is great enough - then your world collapses. There is nothing left for you but to despair of everything, of civilization and the future of mankind. From that bondage I am, we are, free. Since we are prepared to renounce a good part of our infantile wishes, we can bear it if a few of our expectations turn out to be illusions. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#religion #science #attitude

Among [Applewhite's] other teachings was the classic cult specialty of developing disdain for anyone outside of the Heaven's Gate commune. Applewhite flattered his would-be alien flock that they were an elite elect far superior to the non-initiated humans whom he considered to be deluded zombies.[...]Applewhite effectively fed his paranoid persecution complex to his followers to ensure blind loyalty to the group and himself while fostering alienation from the mundane world. This paradoxical superior/fearful attitude towards “Them” (i.e., anyone who is not one of “Us”) is one of the simplest means of hooking even the most skeptical curiosity seeker into the solipsistic netherworld of a [mentally unbalanced] leader's insecure and threatened worldview. ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#mass-suicides #psychopathology #religious-science-fiction #sects #sociology

There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#beauty

Whenever there is harmony, there is life. ↗

— Muhammad E. Osman

#life #scienc #wisdom #beauty

Nature is beautiful, such beautiful must be based on beautiful facts and beautiful laws ↗

— Muhammad E. Osman

#inspiration #nature #science #wisdom #beauty

Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They're beautiful―God, how beautiful they are! They're like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They're as graceful as any bird. They're as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses―except for hunger―they respond to. There are more than two hundred and fifty species of shark, and everyone is different from every other one. ↗

— Peter Benchley

#science #sharks #beauty

We must have clean air and water, and beautiful natural foods for everyone, everywhere. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#clear-conscience #environment #beauty

Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and similes are wonderful literary devices but they do nothing but obscure the beauty of technology. ↗

— Charles Petzold

#computer-science #programming #technology #beauty

I couldn’t help but notice how hot he looked tonight with his strong build lining his t-shirt. He should never cover his beauty with clothes and such things. - Ariel ↗

— Victoria H. Smith

#humor #new-adult #romance #science-fiction #science-fiction-romance

A recent survey of 2,000 male graduates of Harvard Business School found that penis length & IQ were equally good predictors of annual income. -- from "Eugene ↗

— Greg Egan

#science-fiction #business