Andy Rooney Quotes

The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.

The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.

Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th.

One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.

Pin thy faith to no man's sleeve. Hast thou not two eyes of thy own?

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

Once you move away from home, it's never quite the same again. You expect everything to be just as you left it, and it never is. It's almost the first step into adulthood, realising you've got to make your own way.

If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong.

If you're not thinking for yourself, then you're following-not leading.

You must learn not only to judge but to act for yourself.

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

There was a time when the respect and trust my children had for me would have made you sick to your stomach. They believed I could blow on a red traffic light and turn it green.

Once you have really done all you can, then you can show it to people. But I find this is increasingly not the case with the younger people. They do a first draft and want somebody to finish it off for them with good advice.

Running to Mommy and Daddy on the campus grievance committee is unworthy of strong women.

a little of the ready reliance on the expert comes from the desire to waive responsibillity, comes from the endless evasion of life instead of an honest facing of it. The expert is to many what the priest is, someone who knows absolutely and can tell us what to do. The king, the priest, the expert, have one after the other had our allegiance, but so far as we put any of them in the place of ourselves, we have not a sound society and neither individual nor general progress.

I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child. It certainly was drilled into mine at that age. And you really can't be responsible when you are a kid for what adults put into your head.

What I have against religion is that they start you when you are so defenseless. I mean, I was three when they started pumping this bullshit into my head. I believed in Santa Claus and the Fairy Godmother, of course I believed in a virgin birth, and a guy lived in a whale, and a woman came from a rib. But then something happened that made me doubt all of it: I graduated sixth grade!

The American culture ideal of the "self-made-man," of everyone "standing on his own feet" seemed as tragic a picture as the initiative-destroying dependence on a benevolent despot. He felt and perceived clearly that we all need continuous help from each other, and that this type of interdependence is the greatest challenge to maturity of individual and group functioning.

There are great advantages to seeing yourself as an accident created by amateur parents as they practiced. You then have been left in an imperfect state and the rest is up to you. Only the most pitifully inept child requires perfection from parents.

Welcome to adulthood." Cob said. "Every child finds a day when the realize that adults can be weak and wrong just like everyone else. After that day, you are an adult. Like it or not.

The world doesn't owe you anything. It was here first.

Following the herd is fine, until they all run off the side of a cliff together.

College is such a unique time because you're learning a little bit how to be an adult. You're learning how to take care of yourself without parental influence, and you're exposed to so many great minds. I feel like I didn't even know how to think until I got to college.

Men aren't men until they can get to Sears by themselves.

Every form of true education trains the student in self-reliance