The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, ‘Is this real, or is this just a ride?’ And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, Hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride. And we kill those people. Bill Hicks
The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance – these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community. J Robert Oppenheimer
April 11th 1862: I firmly believe that before many centuries more, Science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day Science will have the existence of mankind in his power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world. Henry Brooks Adams
One may say, ‘The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.’ Albert Einstein, article ‘Physics & Reality’, attributions & variations inc Kant
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. Albert Einstein
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. Albert Einstein, attributions & variations
If you can approach the world’s complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things. Daniel C Dennett: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm’s ‘Being greater than which nothing can be conceived’, it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred. Daniel C Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolutions and the Meaning of Life
The planets in their stations listening stood,
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
Open, ye everlasting gates, they sung,
Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in
The great creator from his work returned
Magnificent, his six day’s work, a world. John Milton, Paradise Lost 7:573
‘Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?’
‘Yes.’
‘All like ours?’
‘I don’t know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound – a few blighted.’
‘Which do we live on – a splendid one or a blighted one?’
‘A blighted one.’ Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were. Thomas Hardy, He Never Expected Much, 1928
Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. Harriet Tubman
One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made. That this is still the morning of creation. This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere. The dew is never all dried at once. A shower is for ever falling. Vapour is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming. On sea and continents and islands each in its turn as the round Earth rolls. John Muir
We need to wake up and find out what freedom is all about. And start asking some very serious questions about who is leading us and where are they taking the human family. We are in serious trouble on this Earth. And the people who are guiding the destiny of this world are profoundly evil. Their agenda is so profoundly evil most men are not even able to perceive it. Jordan Maxwell, Forbidden Knowledge
The entire world operates on symbols, words, terms, emblems, national coats of arms, heraldry, flags. Jordan Maxwell, lecture The Illuminati
Nothing in this world works the way you think it does. Nothing. Jordan Maxwell, Project Camelot Conference September 2009
What have we done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and did her,
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn,
And tied her with fences and dragged her down.
I hear a very gentle sound,
With your ear down to the ground:
We want the world and we want it now! Jim Morrison & The Doors, When the Music’s Over, song 1967
That world has gone. The anchors have dissolved or are dissolving. There is neither a monetary nor religious anchor. The pound floats; Catholicism is mired in the horrifying sexual antics of its priests; CEOs pay themselves salaries without limits. The great visions of how one might associate with others – in an Empire, a Commonwealth, a socialist economy, a commune, a religious community, a trade union or even a company – have become implausible. We are individualists in a not very sovereign nation state being buffeted around by economic forces beyond our control. We madly find meaning in cults and celebrity, overinvesting in family as the last redoubt of meaning, while reconciling ourselves to fewer public services and cynical companies even while the country is very much richer. Will Hutton, The Baby Boomers and the Price of Personal Freedom
Call the world if you please, ‘The vale of soul-making. John Keats
The world owes me nothing. Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child
Hegel says somewhere that all great events and personalities in world history reappear in one fashion or another. He forgets to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Karl Marx
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. Karl Marx
We can make our own world. We can make our own purposes, our own warmth, our own affections, our own loves, and we can lead a life that’s anything but bleak. Richard Dawkins
What I really want to do is to open people’s eyes to the elegance and the beauty of the world as seen through scientific eyes. And if religion is a casualty of that, so much the better. Richard Dawkins, In Confidence, 2010
To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour. William Blake
I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed
To its idolatries a patient knee. Lord Byron
From Greenland’s icy mountains,
From India’s coral strand,
Where Afric’s sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand. Reginald Heber, 1783-1826
This world is controlled by reptilian entities that occupy human form. David Icke
Your chilly stars I can forego,
This warm kind world is all I know. William Corey, Mimnermus in Church, 1858
I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned. Peter Ackroyd, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
Say what you like, it’s an ugly world and no mistake. Rab C Nesbitt s3e2: Touch, BBC 1993
The world is an veil of hopeless misery. Marriage nothing but institutionalised boredom. Rab C Nesbitt s6e3: Growth, BBC 1997
To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world. Rudolf Steiner, Verses and Meditations
Don’t you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up? D H Lawrence, Women in Love, 1920
All the world is sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam,
Oh! Darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from the old folks at home. Stephen Collins Foster, The Old Folks at Home, 1851