It's offense you maybe can't live with because it opens up a crack inside your thinking, and if you look down into it you see there are evil things down there, and they have little yellow eyes that don't blink, and there's a stink down there in that dark and after a while you think maybe there's a whole other universe where a square moon rises in the sky, and the stars laugh in cold voices, and some of the triangles have four sides, and some have five, and some have five raised to the fifth power of sides. In this universe there might grow roses which sing. Everything leads to everything, he would have told them if he could. Go to your church and listen to your stories about Jesus walking on the water, but if I saw a guy doing that I'd scream and scream and scream. Because it wouldn't look like a miracle to me. It would look like an offense.
Stephen KingRelated topics
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In the universe where everything works the way it common-sensically ought to, everything about the study of Artificial General Intelligence is driven by the one overwhelming fact of the indescribably huge effects: initial conditions and unfolding patterns whose consequences will resound for as long as causal chains continue out of Earth, until all the stars and galaxies in the night sky have burned down to cold iron, and maybe long afterward, or forever into infinity if the true laws of physics should happen to permit that. To deliberately thrust your mortal brain onto that stage, as it plays out on ancient Earth the first root of life, is an act so far beyond "audacity" as to set the word on fire, an act which can only be excused by the terrifying knowledge that the empty skies offer no higher authority.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
As everybody who met him noted, Krajisnik had only one long and extraordinarily brushy eyebrow, which spanned his forehead, creating what looked like a permanent dark cloud over his deep-set eyes. Although Krajisnik had not been indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal - and could therefore participate in Dayton - it was hard to distinguish his views from those of his close friend Radovan Karadzic. Milosevic had often said that Krajisnik was "more difficult" than Karadzic, but we had little basis on which to make an indipendent judgment. (...) He and Izetbegovic knew each other well, from lengthy meetings in the Bosnian Assembly before the war. Krajisnik owned a five-hectare farm on the edge of Sarajevo, in an area that would probably revet to the Muslims in any settlement, and we often made bitter jokes that the war was really over "Krajisnik's five hectares."
Richard Holbrooke
Every time a Black Freedom Fighter is murdered or captured, the pigs try to create the impression that they have quashed the movement, destroyed our forces, and put down the Black Revolution. The pigs also try to give the impression that five or ten guerrillas are responsible for every revolutionary action carried out in amerika. That is nonsense. That is absurd. Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quentin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us. Many jobless Black veterans and welfare mothers are joining our ranks. Brothers and sisters from all walks of life, who are tired of suffering passively, make up the BLA.
Assata Shakur
I gave up on this stuff. I gave up on my species and ... I gave up on my countrymen. Because I think we squandered great gifts. I think humans were given great great gifts: walking upright, binocular vision, opposable thumb, large brain ... We grew. We had great gifts, and we gave it all up for both money and God ... We gave it all up to superstition, primitive superstition, primitive shit ... Invisible man in the sky, looking down, keeping track of what we do, make sure we don't do the wrong thing, if we do, he puts us in hell, where we burn forever. That kind of shit is very limiting for this brain we have. So we keep ourselves limited. And then we want a toy and a gizmo and gold and we want shiny things, and we want something to plug in that will make big big big things for us... And all that shit is nothing! It's nothing.
George Carlin
If Christ were to walk in this world today, do you know what would happen to Him? He would be placed in a mental institution and given psycho-therapy, just as would His Saints. The world would crucify Him today just as it did 2000 years ago, for the world has not learned a thing, except more devious forms of hypocrisy. And what would happen if, in one of my classes at the university, I would one day tell my students that all the learning of this world is of no importance beside the duty of worshipping God, accepting the God-man who died for our sins, and preparing for the life of the world to come? They would probably laugh at me, and the university officials, if they found out, would fire me-for it is against the law to preach the Truth in our universities. We say that we live in a Christian society, but we do not: we live in a society.
Seraphim Rose
