Yquotes.com

 

"By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none."
--
This phrase seems to have been first mentioned in Manual of a Perfect Atheist by Mexican writer Eduardo Garcia Del Rio, in 1989, without indicating any original source, which does make this quote unreliable. The quote has been widely circulated by atheists to try to prove that Chaplin was also one of them. However, taking into account what Chaplin himself wrote in his autobiography, when he was 75 years old, and what his family members wrote about him, calling Chaplin an atheist seems untenable. (http://www.adherents.com/people/pc/Charlie_Chaplin.html) According to his son, Charles Chaplin, Jr., in his book "My Father, Charlie Chaplin", pages 239-240, Chaplin was not an atheist; he quotes him saying: "I'm not an atheist"... "I can remember him saying on more than one occasion. 'I'm definitely an agnostic. Some scientists say that if the world were to stop revolving we'd all disintegrate. But the world keeps on going. Something must be holding us all in place — some Supreme Force. But what it is I couldn't tell you.". See also pages 210-211 of the book.

 

Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin)

» Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin) - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

The Pythagoreans called the monad "intellect" because they thought that intellect was akin to the One; for among the virtues, they likened the monad to moral wisdom; for what is correct is one. And they called it "being," "cause of truth," "simple," "paradigm," "order," "concord," "what is equal among the greater and the lesser," "the mean between intensity and slackness," "moderation in plurality," "the instant now in time," and moreover they call it "ship," "chariot," "friend," "life," "happiness."

 

Iamblichus of Chalcis

 

A simple idea blinds us, and under the cover of darkness, much happens that most of us would reject if any of us looked. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we don't even notice how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are dying without them. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically. Blindness becomes our common sense. And the challenge for anyone who would reclaim the right to cultivate our culture is to find a way to make this common sense open its eyes.
So far, common sense sleeps. There is no revolt. Common sense does not yet see what there could be to revolt about.

 

Lawrence Lessig

 

? "Absurd" originally means "out of harmony," in a musical context. Hence its dictionary definition: "out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical." In common usage, "absurd" may simply mean "ridiculous," but this is not the sense in which Camus uses the word, and in which it is used when we speak of the Theatre of the Absurd. In an essay on Kafka, Ionesco defined his understanding of the term as follows: "Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose. . . . Cut from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless."

 

Martin Esslin