In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q8jyAdRYbieK8PtfT/taking-ideas-seriously#Ym77AptKtD2h9bXXd on LessWrong, August 2010
“I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.”
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Douglas Adams 317
English writer and humorist 1952–2001Related quotes

As quoted in The Christian Leader, Vol. 37, Issue 7 (17 February 1934)

“I was raised Catholic. That's why I don't take religion too seriously.”
Shiny Happy Jihad (2007)

Said at Keswick, as quoted in The Education Outlook (1926) Vol. 78

“I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence.”
The Pleasures of Love
Context: I am constantly astonished by the people, otherwise intelligent, who think that anything so complex and delicate as a marriage can be left to take care of itself. One sees them fussing about all sorts of lesser concerns, apparently unaware that side by side with them — often in the same bed — a human creature is perishing from lack of affection, of emotional malnutrition.

“A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.”

“I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.”

“I find it increasingly difficult to take Mr Benn seriously as an economics minister.”
Britain in Europe press conference (27 May 1975), quoted in The Times (28 May 1975), p. 3
1970s

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)
Context: There does not seem to be cause for alarm in the dual relationship of the press to the public, whereby it is on one side a purveyor of information and opinion and on the other side a purely business enterprise. Rather, it is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation, is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences. After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are moving impulses of our life. The opposite view was oracularly and poetically set forth in those lines of Goldsmith which everybody repeats, but few really believe: 'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.'.