Quotes about humor

If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately. No government agency could afford to be seen to be spending public money on anything as way out as time travel. Instead one has to use technical terms like closed time-like curves, which are code for time travel.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, . I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers.

In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.

You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

What I'm saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job.

The chiliasts made an atheist out of me.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.

Nobody listens to mathematicians.

We could not guess how different from us they (extraterrestrials) might be. It was hard enough to guess the intentions of our elected representatives in Washington.

Astronomically, the U. S. S. R. and the United States are the same place.