Atheism famous quotes
03-24-2025
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So, of course, Gish's presentation was well received, which it would have been the case had he only gotten up and said "praise the Lord" and sat back down.
-- Michael Shermer -
Remember always that we are pattern-seeking primates who are especially adept at finding patterns with emotional meaning.
-- Michael Shermer -
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
-- Michel de Montaigne -
I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to base fellows is like throwing water into the sea.
-- Miguel de Cervantes -
Hell has been conceived as a police institution, to inspire fear in this world. But the worst of it all is that it no longer frightens anyone, and therefore it will have to be closed down.
-- Miguel de Unamuno -
Scholasticism, a concept which does not bear criticism, is a theological concept specifically designed to sustain faith in the immortality of the soul.
-- Miguel de Unamuno -
People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.
-- Mikhail Bakunin -
All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties.
-- Mikhail Bakunin -
The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.
-- Mikhail Bakunin -
If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
-- Mikhail Bakunin -
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker.
-- Mikhail Bakunin -
God, or rather the fiction of God, is thus the sanction and the intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery on earth, and the liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master.
-- Mikhail Bakunin -
Priests, kings, statesmen, soldiers, bankers and public functionaries of all sorts; policemen, jailers and hangmen; capitalists, usurers, businessmen and property-owners; lawyers, economists and politicians - all of them, down to the meanest grocer, repeat in chorus the words of Voltaire, that if there were no God it would be necessary to invent Him.
-- Mikhail Bakunin -
I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature.
-- Mikhail Gorbachev -
Ah, the bitter, hopeless heart-hunger of godlessness none but an atheist can understand!
-- Miles Franklin -
Religion is a candle inside a multicolored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always there.
-- Muhammad Naguib -
God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.
-- Neil deGrasse Tyson -
There is nothing so revered yet so reviled as war; for even as it brings out the worst in men, it also brings out the best in them.
-- Neil Lowe -
What sort of god would deliberately create a world in which his creatures must eat one another to live?
-- Nel Noddings -
Persecution on racial and religious grounds has absolutely no place in a nation given over to liberty.
-- Nicholas Murray Butler -
If a hit came along, I wouldn't be unhappy about that. But I'm a bit too old for that now-doing videos and all those types of TV shows. I've kind of done all that, in the '70s.
-- Nick Lowe -
Science is advanced by proposing and testing hypothesis, not by declaring questions unsolvable.
-- Nick Matzke -
Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty. Belief or nonbelief was a matter of individual choice - a right underwritten in the basic charter of the nation's liberties.
-- Norman Cousins -
Nonbelievers are protected by the religion clauses of the Constitution not because secular humanism is a religion, which it is not, but because when the government acts on the basis of religion it discriminates against those who do not "believe" in the governmentally favored manner.
-- Norman Dorsen -
He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity - a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation.
-- Norman Douglas -
The Bible should be taught so early and so thoroughly that it sinks straight to the bottom of the mind where everything that comes along can settle on it.
-- Northrop Frye -
The sole purpose and effect of it is to exclude persecution and to secure the important right of religious liberty.
-- Oliver Ellsworth -
Legislatures have no right to set up an inquisition and examine into the private opinions of men. Test-laws are useless and ineffectual, unjust and tyrannical.
-- Oliver Ellsworth -
We seek to create a united Democratic and non-racial society.
-- Oliver Tambo -
The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of man ... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes -
Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. -
Fools, your reward is neither here nor there.
-- Omar Khayyam -
The Revelations of Devout and Learn'd Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn'd, Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep They told their comrades, and to Sleep return'd.
-- Omar Khayyam -
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd Of the Two Worlds so wisely - they are thrust Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn Are scattered, and their mouths are stopped with Dust.
-- Omar Khayyam -
I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion.
-- Oriana Fallaci -
Failure is simply the non-presence of success. But a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.
-- Orlando Bloom -
Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
-- Oscar Wilde -
I have wished to crush Rome that I might crush Christianity.
-- Otto von Bismarck -
The Catholic priest, from the moment he becomes a priest, is a sworn officer of the pope.
-- Otto von Bismarck -
It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are.
-- Ovid -
The orthodox faith painted God as a revengeful being, and yet people talk about loving such a being.
-- P. T. Barnum -
And I can see that everything about this God has been purposely designed to poison our experience of life on earth, not to enhance it, to keep us fearful, to suppress knowledge, to curtail freedom and creativity, and to celebrate death. It's nothing less than the sanctified dumbing-down of the human race. And demanding respect for it is frankly an insult that deserves to be repaid with considerable interest.
-- Pat Condell -
The idea of a Japanese comedian was not only a rarity, it was non-existent.
-- Pat Morita -
It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.
-- Paul Davies -
Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific.
-- Paul Davies -
If we are honest - and scientists have to be - we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality.
-- Paul Dirac -
The church at the time was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just.
-- Paul Feyerabend -
Since I was both an atheist and an absurdist, I had decided that the most absurd thing I could do would be to develop an intimate relationship with the God I didn't believe in.
-- Paul Krassner -
Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy.
-- Paul Kurtz -
The theist can only find meaning by leaving this life for a transcendental world beyond the grave. The human world as he finds it is empty of 'ultimate purpose' and hence meaningless. Theism thus is an attempt to escape from the human condition; it is a pathetic deceit.
-- Paul Kurtz -
No diety will save us; we must save ourselves.
-- Paul Kurtz -
The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully.
-- Paul Kurtz -
Secular humanism proposes ... the complete implementation of the agenda of modernism ... what is necessary for it to occur is a ... New Enlightenment.
-- Paul Kurtz -
We need to be skeptical of utopianists who offer unreliable totalistic visions of other worlds and strive to take us there. We need some ideals, but we also need to protect ourselves from the miscalculations and misadventures of visionaries.
-- Paul Kurtz -
Many humanists have argued that happiness involves a combination of hedonism and creative moral development; that an exuberant life fuses excellence and enjoyment, meaning and enrichment, emotion and cognition.
-- Paul Kurtz -
Humanists hold that ethical values are relative to human experience and need not be derived from theological or metaphysical foundations.
-- Paul Kurtz -
This atheism concerning the gods of men pertains hereafter to any possible faith
-- Paul Ricoeur -
There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy.
-- Paul Rudnick -
For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?
-- Paul the Apostle -
It follows from the assumption of a universally valid ideology, just as night follows day, that other positions are heresy.
-- Paul Watzlawick -
If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
-- Penn Jillette -
Religion cannot and should not be replaced by atheism. Religion needs to go away and not be replaced by anything. Atheism is not a religion. It's the absence of religion, and that's a wonderful thing.
-- Penn Jillette -
Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.
-- Penn Jillette -
Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
-- Penn Jillette -
How do you know it's not true if you don't believe in it?
-- Pete Hautman -
"You don't believe in God," I said to Stein. "God is a word banging around in the human nervous system. He exists about as much as Santa Claus." "Santa Claus has had a tremendous influence, exist or not." "For children." "Lots of saints have died for God with a courage that's hardly childish." "That's part of the horror. It's all a fantasy. It's all for nothing."
-- Peter De Vries -
Do you think in many ways, sir, you're the victim of circumstance now?
-- Peter Jennings -
The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry.
-- Peter Kreeft -
The opposite of theism is not atheism, it’s idolatry
-- Peter Kreeft -
The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.
-- Peter Ustinov -
Where doubt there truth is - 'tis her shadow.
-- Philip James Bailey -
In our country we ask no toleration for religion and its free exercise, but we claim it as an inalienable right.
-- Philip Schaff -
The United States furnishes the first example in history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control of religion.
-- Philip Schaff -
The Devil's strategy for our times is to trivialize human existence and isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands or economic anxieties.
-- Philip Zimbardo -
He who tries to flee from God takes refuge in himself.
-- Philo -
When blithe to argument I come, Though armed with facts, and merry, May Providence protect me from The fool as adversary, Whose mind to him a kingdom is Where reason lacks dominion, Who calls conviction prejudice And prejudice opinion.
-- Phyllis McGinley -
It is only common prejudice that induces us to believe that atheism is a fearful state.
-- Pierre Bayle -
One must be stark mad, to believe that mankind can subsist without magistrates.
-- Pierre Bayle -
I get up and retire when I wish. I go out if I wish and I do not go out if I do not desire to do so, except for the two days on which I give lectures.
-- Pierre Bayle -
Compulsion in the literal Sense is maliciously misrepresented, by supposing it authorizes Violences committed against the Truth. The Answer to this; by which it is prov'd, that the literal Sense does in reality authorize the stirring up Persecutions against the Cause of Truth, and that an erroneous Conscience has the same Rights as an enlighten'd Conscience.
-- Pierre Bayle -
I lay down the Position, That whatever a Conscience well directed allows us to do for the Advancement of Truth, an erroneous Conscience will warrant for advancing a suppos'd Truth.
-- Pierre Bayle -
The movement of comets is part of the ordinary works of nature which, without regard to the happiness or misery of mankind, are transported from one part of the heavens to another by virtue of the general laws of motion.
-- Pierre Bayle -
Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power.....
-- Plato -
A certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the gods.
-- Plato -
Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?
-- Plato -
Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd!
-- Pope Benedict XVI -
There is no more harm in adultery than in rubbing one's hands together.
-- Pope Boniface VIII -
The mysteries of the faith are not to [be] explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted.
-- Pope Innocent III -
Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid ... research and discussions ... with regard to the doctrine of evolution.
-- Pope Pius XII -
As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist.
-- Protagoras -
Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not.
-- Protagoras -
We live our lives for our life's sake, rather than for illusions about rewards and satisfaction after we're dead.
-- PZ Myers -
I admit that the generation which produced Stalin, Auschwitz and Hiroshima will take some beating, but the radical and universal consciousness of the death of God is still ahead of us. Perhaps we shall have to colonise the stars before it is finally borne in upon us that God is not out there.
-- R. J. Hollingdale -
The Bible identifies 15 crimes against the family worthy of the death penalty. ABORTION is treason against the family and deserves the DEATH PENALTY. ADULTERY is treason to the family; adulterers should be put to DEATH. HOMOSEXUALITY is treason to the family, and it too, is worthy of DEATH.
-- R.J. Rushdoony -
Since no one really knows anything about God, those who think they do are just troublemakers.
-- Rabia Basri
