Madalyn Murray O'Hair famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Religion has ever been anti-human, anti-woman, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education and science to take over.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
There is no God. There's no heaven. There's no hell. There are no angels. When you die, you go in the ground, the worms eat you.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
So my life and the life of my family has been completely disrupted in absolutely every way. But it's been worth it. It's uncovered a vast cesspool of illegitimate economic and political power in which the Church is immersed right up to its ears, and I intend to dive in headfirst and pull it out of there dripping wet for all the world to see -- no matter how long it takes, no matter whose feet get stepped on in the process, no matter how much it costs, no matter how great the personal sacrifice.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Church wealth are moving into everything-gas stations, banks, television stations, supermarket chains, hotels, steel mills, resort areas, farms, wine factories, warehouses, bottling works, printing plants, schools, theaters-everything you could conceivably think of that has nothing to do with religion, they are moving into big. They're even coming in as stockholders in the big oil companies, and the Bank of America is almost entirely owned by the Catholic Church.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
About six years ago, Life magazine ran an article on the historicity of Jesus and I was floored to find that they conceded the only evidence we have for his existence is in the Gospels. But don't take Life's word for it. In his book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, the most definitive study that's ever been done on the subject, Albert Schweitzer admitted that there isn't a shred of conclusive proof that Christ ever lived, let alone was the son of God. He concludes that one must therefore accept both on faith.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
... religion is a crutch, and only the crippled need crutches.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I told my kids I just want three words on my tombstone, if I have one. I'll probably be cremated. One is "woman." I'm very comfortable in that role. I've loved being a woman, I've loved being a mother, I've loved being a grandmother. I want three words: Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. That's me.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The fear of hell is the basis for the Christian faith.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The most heinous crime of the Church has been perpetrated not against churchmen but against churchgoers. With its poisonous concepts of sin and divine punishment, it's warped and brainwashed countless millions.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I feel that everyone who wants to say anything, do anything, should be able to say anything or do anything, within the limits of not hurting another person.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
This crusade to separate church and state is only one expression of my raison d'être. I'm an atheist, but I'm also an anarchist, and a feminist, and an integrationist.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Long ago, when I was a very young girl, I said that I wanted to go everywhere, see everything, taste everything. hear everything, touch everything, try everything before I died. There isn't anything you can name that a woman can do that I haven't done. I don't intend to stand by and be a spectator. I want to be right in there in the midst of it, right up to my nose - totally involved in the community, in the world, in the stream of history, in the human image.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I went off to college, a good, middle-class, very proper college, a Brethren institution, where two years of Bible study are required for graduation. It was a good, sound, thorough, but completely biased evaluation of the Bible, and I was delighted with it, because it helped to document my doubts; it gave me a framework within which I could be critical.My independent study continued for 20 years after this. So I do know the Bible very well from a Protestant point of view.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
In his book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, the most definitive study that's ever been done on the subject, Albert Schweitzer admitted that there isn't a shred of conclusive proof that Christ ever lived, let alone was the son of God. He concludes that one must therefore accept both on faith. I reject both for the same reason.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Do you know anybody who's come back with a firsthand report on heaven? If you do, let me know. Until then, you'll pardon me if I don't buy it.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
That would be the frontispiece. This was a picture of my mother and me coming out of the United States Supreme Court, with fecal matter smeared across our faces. They wrapped it in wax paper so that when I received it I'd get the full impact of the message. Though I haven't gotten anything quite that original lately, there's still never a dull moment in my mailbox.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The atheist realizes that there must not only be an acceptance of his right to hold his opinion, but that ultimately his is the job to turn his culture from religion, to eliminate those irrational ideas which have held the human race in intellectual slavery.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times. . . . He is beyond human forgiveness.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The church doctrines of obedience to authority, repentance, fear of punishment, self-abnegation, acceptance of outer direction rather than inner assurance, elevation of faith over reason, and intolerance make institutionalized religion an ideal instrument of social constraint.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
You hate me because I am the embodiment of all your doubts.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Atheism is based upon a materialist philosophy, which holds that nothing exists but natural phenomena. There are no supernatural forces or entities, nor can there be any. Nature simply exists.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
If anybody wants to engage in any kind of sexual activity with any consenting partner, that is their business. Anybody can do anything they damn well please, as long as the relationship isn't exploitive. And I don't feel that legality should have anything to do with it. There are certain bodily functions of mine which I will not allow to be supervised.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Atheists have an excellent longevity record because we have no place to go after we die, so we take good care of ourselves and our world while we are here.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Ill tell you, Mr. Thomas, why some Christians are afraid of me. They're not sure that what they believe is really true. If they were sure, I wouldn't be a threat to them at all.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I want a strong man, but a gentle one. And, most unlikely of all, but most essential, I want a man with a capacity for love - to give it generously and accept it joyously. I also want somebody who, when I say, "Let's call it quits," won't hang on; who'll say, "All right, it was fun while it lasted. So long and good luck."
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
No god ever gave any man anything, nor ever answered any prayer at any time - nor ever will.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend - just as if it were a novel - very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Atheism is a very positive affirmation of man's ability to think for himself, to do for himself, to find answers to his own problems.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The neighborhood children, of course, were forbidden by their parents to play with my little boy, Garth, so I finally got him a little kitten to play with. A couple of weeks later we found it on the porch with its neck wrung.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I'm atheist because religion is a crutch, and only the crippled need crutches. I can get around perfectly well on my own two feet, and so can everyone else with a backbone and a grain of common sense.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I'd describe myself as a sexual libertarian - but I'm not a libertine. "To each his own" is my motto.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Late one night our house was attacked with stones and bricks by five or six young Christians, and my father got very upset and frightened. Well, the next day he dropped dead of a heart attack. The community knew very well that he had a heart condition, so I lay a murder to the city of Baltimore.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
When I started going to church, my first memories are of the minister getting up and accusing us of being full of sin, though he didn't say why; then they would pass the collection plate, and I got it in my mind that this had to do with purification of the soul, that we were being invited to buy expiation from our sins. So I gave it all up. It was too nonsensical.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I recall that I had a terrible struggle finding anything antireligious in the school libraries.But many years later my family moved into a house where a woman had left a box of books containing 20 volumes on the history of the Inquisition. I found out there was a word for people like me: "heretic." I was kind of delighted to find I had an identity.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
It would be impossible to calculate the psychic damage concepts of sin has inflicted on generations of children who might have grown up into healthy, happy. productive, zestful human beings but for the burden of antisexual fear and guilt ingrained in them by the Church. This alone is enough to condemn religion.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Once involved in the school-prayer fight, I rapidly became aware of, and appalled by, the political and economic power of the Church in America -all based on the violation of one of our nation's canon laws: the separation of church and state.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
By the time it's considered socially acceptable to start screwing, most of us are sexually constipated, and this is often an incurable condition. I think young people should be able to have their first sexual love affair whenever they feel like it. In the case of most girls, this would be around 13 or 14; with most boys, around 15 or 16.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I want to drink life to the dregs, to enlarge myself to the absolute limits of my being - and to strive for a society in which everyone -regardless of race, creed, color and especially religious conviction - has the same exhilarating raison d'être, and the same opportunity to fulfill it.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Those so-called records in the Bible were written by devout ecclesiasts who wanted to believe, and wanted others to believe, in the coming of a Messiah. Until someone proves otherwise, therefore, these stories must be considered nothing more than folk tales consisting in equal parts of legend and wish fulfillment.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I can't pinpoint a period in history or a place in the universe where religion has actually helped the welfare of man.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I've found that most people who are bound together legally would be a damn sight happier together -or apart -if they were released from the contract. A man-woman relationship is physical and emotional, not legal.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I'm saying that there's absolutely no conclusive evidence that Jesus ever really existed, even as a mortal. I don't believe he was a historical figure at all.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The churches rose to power on the income from tax-free property. What earthly -or heavenly- right have they got to enjoy a privilege denied to everyone else, even including nonprofit organizations? None! My contention is that with the churches exempted from property taxation, you and I have to pay that much more in taxes to make up for what they're not contributing.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I don't feel that people should glom onto other people. I feel that relationships should be nice and easy and convenient and happy and not strictured with legality or jealousy.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The agnostic is gutless and prefers to keep one safe foot in the god camp.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I don't think anybody should be celibate - and that goes for priests as well as nuns. I don't even like to alter a cat. We should all live life to the fullest, and sex is a part of life.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I think this word 'disbelieve' would be the best of all possible worlds if everybody were an atheist or an agnostic or a humanist - his or her own particular brand - but as for compelling people to this, absolutely not.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
On a nationwide basis, I would guess that the various churches would have to pay annually an amount at least equal to the national debt. But it's impossible for me to make an exact estimate, because the churches hide their wealth in every way they can - deliberate falsification as to the value of property, registering it under phony names in order to obscure the fact that the Church owns the property.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I just want a man -a real, two-balled masculine guy -and there aren't many of them around, believe me. But I do want somebody my own age, and somebody who has brains enough to keep me interested and to earn enough money to support me in the style to which I've become accustomed.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I was about 12 or 13 years old. I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend ,just as if it were a novel, very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The history of the Church has been a history of divisiveness, repression and reaction. For almost 2000 years, Christianity has held mankind back in politics, in economics, in industry, in science, in philosophy, in culture.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
My life and the life of my family has been completely disrupted in absolutely every way by starting the school-prayer case. But it's been worth it. It's uncovered a vast cesspool of illegitimate economic and political power in which the Church is immersed right up to its ears, and I intend to dive in headfirst and pull it out of there dripping wet for all the world to see -no matter how long it takes, no matter whose feet get stepped on in the process, no matter how much it costs, no matter how great the personal sacrifice.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Even if I believed there was a real Jesus, I wouldn't fall for that line of hogwash. The "Virgin" Mary should get a posthumous medal for telling the biggest ***** lie that was ever told. Anybody who believes that will believe that the moon is made out of green cheese.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
At no time have I ever said that people should be stripped of their right to the insanity of belief in God. If they want to practice this kind of irrationality, that's their business. It won't get them anywhere; it certainly won't make them happier or more compassionate human beings; but if they want to chew that particular cud. they're welcome to it.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I just can't see either a man or a woman in a dependency position, because from this sort of relationship flows a feeling of superiority on one side and inferiority on the other, and that's a form of slow poison. As I see it, men wouldn't want somebody inferior to them unless they felt inadequate themselves. They're intimidated by a mature woman.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I don't care whether I succeed or whether I fail as long as I am trying. I hope that I succeed.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
If any one age could be singled out as the worst in the history of Christendom, it would be the administration of Pope Pius XII, the most reactionary head of the most reactionary single force in the world - a force that binds men's minds, a force that divides them, a force that chains them so that they are unable to think and act for themselves.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Quite apart from the Church's financial self-interest in getting me out of the way, Baltimore is an overwhelmingly Catholic city and like most good Christians, they felt we ought to be punished for our unorthodox views.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Let nature decide. When a cow is biologically ready to have sex relations, she mates with the nearest well-hung bull. When a flower is ready to scatter its seed, it pollinates. It's the same way throughout nature - except with man, who tries to postpone consummation of his sex drive, unsuccessfully for the most part, for six or eight years after he reaches puberty.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
We were just floored by the kindness of the people here. The minister of the Unitarian Church in Honolulu invited my family over to his office the day we arrived and told us to make it our headquarters while we looked for a permanent residence. When we couldn't find a place for about a week, he let us live in the church; that's ironic, isn't it? But it points up the vastly different intellectual atmosphere that prevails here in Hawaii.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I was overwhelmed by the number of calls we got from people offering to rent us houses, to take us out to dinner, to drive us around house hunting. Everyone was just indescribably kind in Havaii. Finally we moved into a house offered to us for an incredible $125 a month by a man who feels that the separation of church and state is a valid constitutional issue which should be fought for.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I'm not proud of having been married -I've had five affairs, all of them real wingdings. I've enjoyed every ***** minute of them, but sooner or later I've outgrown every one of them, and when I did I got fed up and threw them out. If they can't keep up with me, the hell with them.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Kids should be taught about sex, sex hygiene and contraceptive methods starting in the sixth grade, and whenever they want to try it, they should be allowed to go at it without supervision or restriction -in their parents' bedroom, on the grass in a park, in a motel; it doesn't matter, as long as the setting is private and pleasant. If we did all this, our kids would grow up into happier, healthier human beings. But we won't, of course. It would make too much sense.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I want three words: Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. That's me.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Sex is where you find it. I say take it and enjoy it. Give and receive freely, without fear, without guilt and without contractual obligations.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
If this taxation exemptions for Church were rescinded, our property taxes would be substantially lowered, and those who rent houses and apartments would consequently be able to pass along this savings in the form of lowered rents. It could have a profoundly salubrious effect on the entire economy.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
We wish our Christian brothers would be honest and permit us our heroes. We do not deny them theirs.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The relationships that people have - that are sexual, psychological, emotional - these relationships are not open to supervision by parents, schools, churches, or government. Nobody has any right to intervene at all in any kind of relationship like that.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Actually, I don't like Atheists very much - at least most of them ~ because they are not motivated to move into the community and attempt to correct the injustices which are everywhere apparent against them.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition. It's no coincidence that most of my abusive mail - sentencing me to exquisite Oriental tortures and relegating me to hell-fire and damnation -comes from self-admitted Catholics.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
The atheist must abandon his defensive positions, take up the cudgels and go forward, rather than into the retreat of apathy.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
But the most heinous crime of the Church has been perpetrated not against churchmen but against churchgoers. With its poisonous concepts of sin and divine punishment, it's warped and brainwashed countless millions. It would be impossible to calculate the psychic damage this has inflicted on generations of children who might have grown up into healthy, happy. productive, zestful human beings but for the burden of antisexual fear and guilt ingrained in them by the Church. This alone is enough to condemn religion.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Let's distinguish between freedom and equality. The modern American woman may be more liberated sexually than her mother was, but I don't think she enjoys a bit more sexual equality. The American male continues to use her sexually for one thing: a means to the end of his own ejaculation.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
As a militant feminist, I believe in complete equality with men: intellectual, professional, economic, social and sexual; they're all equally essential, and they're all equally lacking in American society today.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I do know the Bible very well from a Protestant point of view - which is what, along with my reason, entitles me to refute it. You can't rationally reject something until you know all about it.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I'd make an educated guess that 20 to 25 percent of the taxable property in the U.S. is Church-owned.In a recent book, Church Wealth and Business Income, it was estimated that this property -all of it tax-exempt -is worth upwards of 80 billion dollars. I know that's a fantastic, unbelievable figure, but there's every reason to believe that it's on the conservative side; and this amount is increasing yearly at a geometric rate.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I decided that if nobody else was going to do anything to rectify this colossal inequity in taxation, I'd have to do it myself. So I instituted a suit against the city of Baltimore demanding that the city assessor be specifically ordered to assess the Church for its vast property holdings in the city, and that the city tax collector then be instructed to collect the taxes once the assessment has been made.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
It doesn't seem to occur to men that woman might be a worthwhile end in herself, or to see to it that she has a proper sexual release. And, to him, sex appeal is directly proportional to the immensity of a woman's tits.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
If a humanist or an atheist or an agnostic says, "We'll bake you a pie," we can go right into the kitchen and bake it, and you can eat it an hour later. We don't promise you a pie in the sky by and by. It's charlatanry to promise people something that no one can be sure will ever be delivered. But it's even worse to offer people a reward, like children, for being good, and to threaten them with punishment if they're not.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
As I grew a little bit older and got interested in law, I read that Clarence Darrow didn't believe in the Bible either. So I read everything he had ever written, all of his trials, everything - to search out the philosophy of his disbelief.But I couldn't find it.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
When I learned that there was such a thing as an atheist, I looked it up - and found out that the definition fitted me to a tee. Finally, at the age of 24, I found out who and what I was. Better late than never.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Let's face it: If a son of God was ever born, it was because of this wonderful sex act that Joseph and Mary enjoyed one night.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Scholars have found that references to Christ in Josephus were deliberately planted in the translation long after it was written, and the Latin references to Christ are not to a person of that name. In the Dead Sea Scrolls there was mention of a particular "teacher of righteousness" who had characteristics somewhat like those attributed to Christ, but it might easily have been someone else.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I went into the Army, and one day, in the middle of a bull session, somebody called me an atheist. Believe it or not, it was the first time I'd ever heard the word. It goes to show you how a person can grow up in America and have a college education and still not know a ***** thing.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I'm thrilled to feel that I can rely on myself totally and absolutely; that my children are being brought up so that when they meet a problem they can't cop out by foisting it off on God.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I was shamed.My son, Bill, who was 14 come to me and said: "Mother, you've been professing that you're an atheist for a long time now. Well, I don't believe in God either, but every day in school I'm forced to say prayers, and I feel like a hypocrite. Why should I be compelled to betray my beliefs?" I couldn't answer him.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
My son Bill, who came to me in 1960-he was 14 then, quoted the old parable to me: "It is not by their words, but by their deeds that ye shall know them" -pointing out that if I was a true atheist, I would not permit the public schools of America to force him to read the Bible and say prayers against his will. He was right.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Words divorced from action supporting them are meaningless and hypocritical.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I'd been a psychiatric social worker for 17 years, but within 24 hours after I started the case against studying reading Bible in school by my son, I was fired from my job as a supervisor in the city public welfare department. And I was unable to find another one. So my income was completely cut off.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
I decided that we'd have to take our chances with the law and get the hell out of Baltimore. I thought of seeking asylum in Canada or Australia or England, but I didn't want to leave the United States, because for better or worse I'm an American, and this is my land; so I decided to fight it out on home ground, and finally we hit upon Hawaii, because of the liberal atmosphere created by its racial admixture, and because of its relatively large population of Buddhists, who are largely nontheistic.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
We packed up all the worldly possessions we could carry with us and took the next flight to Hawaii from Washington. It took just about every cent my family had to our name just to pay the plane fare. When we arrived, we had about $15 left among us. We were really in pitiful shape. But we were together, and we were alive, and this was all that mattered.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
Pope John XXIII was an amoeba of goodness in a sea of waste, mistakenly believing that the Holy See could or would really change in any fundamental way.He was a tragic figure, for he raised a false hope, cast a brief ray of light that was snuffed out when he died.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair -
There are good, humanitarian people everywhere - occasionally even in the Church.
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair
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