“If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.”

— Penn Jillette

p. 129 http://books.google.com/books?id=KsI3sswEg14C&pg=PA129&dq=%22if+every+trace+of+any+single+religion%22
2010s, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that…" by Penn Jillette?

Penn Jillette 49

American magician 1955

Related quotes

“Everywhere these inventions of science by ignorant misuse of a new technique were wiping out the artist.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

A Testament (1957)

“Great as heaven and earth are, men still find some things in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus it is that, were the superior man to speak of his way in all its greatness, nothing in the world would be found able to embrace it, and were he to speak of it in its minuteness, nothing in the world would be found able to split it.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean
Context: The way which the superior man pursues, reaches wide and far, and yet is secret. Common men and women, however ignorant, may intermeddle with the knowledge of it; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage does not know. Common men and women, however much below the ordinary standard of character, can carry it into practice; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage is not able to carry into practice. Great as heaven and earth are, men still find some things in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus it is that, were the superior man to speak of his way in all its greatness, nothing in the world would be found able to embrace it, and were he to speak of it in its minuteness, nothing in the world would be found able to split it.

“It's an abominable place. If there was an Old Testamental God, he would do his job and wipe the place out. The only bad thing is that some really good restaurants would go up as well.”

Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe

About Hollywood. As quoted in the New York Times article Terry Gilliam's Feel-Good Endings http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/movies/14mcgr.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=terrygilliam (14 August 2005)

“Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts.”

Charles Fort (1874–1932) American writer

p279
Wild Talents (1932)

“I would want things to be different than they were. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious.”

Francine Prose (1947) American writer

Source: Goldengrove

“For even if the life of my own Earth and this other Earth on which I stood had started out identically (and they might well have started out identically) there still would be, along the way, millions of little deviations, no one of which, perhaps, by itself, would be significant, but the cumulative effects of all these deviations eventually would result in a life and culture that would bear no resemblance to any other Earth.”

Clifford D. Simak book All Flesh is Grass

Source: All Flesh is Grass (1965), Chapter 12 (p. 123)

“As you can well imagine, any nuclear bombing study that neglected to target Moscow would be laughed out of the room. (That is, no study at that time; 10 or 15 years later senior policy officials were debating how good an idea this might be. If you wiped out the political leadership of the Soviet Union in the process, who would you deal with in arranging for a truce and who would be left to run the country after the war?) Consequently, two of RAND’s brightest mathematicians were assigned the task of determining, with the help of computers, in great detail, precisely what would happen to the city were a bomb of so many megatons dropped on it. It was truly a daunting task and called for devising a mathematical model unimaginably complex; one that would deal with the exact population distribution, the precise location of various industries and government agencies, the vulnerability of all the important structures to the bomb’s effects, etc., etc. However, these two guys were up to the task and toiled in the vineyards for some months, finally coming up with the results. Naturally, they were horrendous.”

Samuel T. Cohen (1921–2010) American physicist

Harold Mitchell, a medical doctor, an expert on human vulnerability to the H-bomb’s effects, told me when the study first began: “Why are they wasting their time going through all this shit? You know goddamned well that a bomb this big is going to blow the fucking city into the next county. What more do you have to know?” I had to agree with him.
F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

“Every technology creates good and bad. You can sit here and say, "AI is really bad, we shouldn't have AI" - that's nonsense. We have to figure out how to use it in a responsible way, that's our job.”

Michael Dell (1965) Businessman, CEO

ZDNet: "AI shouldn't be held back by scaremongering: Michael Dell" https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-shouldnt-be-held-back-by-scaremongering-michael-dell/ (02 May 2018)

“Waterloo will wipe out the memory of my forty victories; but that which nothing can wipe out is my Civil Code. That will live forever.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

As quoted in The Story of World Progress (1922) by Willis Mason West, p. 437
Attributed

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Penn Jillette 49

Related quotes

Related topics