Quote Factory:)

About Quotes:


I use quite a few quotes throughout this site, and have diligently tried to use them with care, with my ear tuned both for accuracy and context.  I use quotes because I think they add color and kick.  A good quote can open an complex idea and make it comprehensible.  On the other hand, a quote is poor source for argument.  My goal is using quotes is not to malign anyone, nor (I hope) present any idea in a false light.   Sometimes people say one thing in one place, or at a place in their lives -- that they would not say at another.  I have seen too,  numerous times when a quote, lifted from context, says something very different than intended by its author.   Misquoting is not a creationist thing, nor a materialist thing, nor left nor right per say.  I have seen it done by people of many ideological stripes.   


For example, here is a common misquote (by failure to provide larger context)


To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. (Darwin 1872)


As is, Darwin goes on to address his own "challenge"



Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. (Darwin 1872, 143-144)
Darwin continues with three more pages describing a sequence of plausible intermediate stages between eyelessness and human eyes, giving examples from existing organisms to show that the intermediates are viable.     http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA113_1.html




In the end, it is impossible to provide all context for all statements, lest we also provide every word ever written, however, if you see me use a quote that you believe is inaccurate in either context or content, please bring it to my attention.