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(Be forewarned: Some may not be for everyone.)
"Atheists do look for answers to existence itself. They just don't make them up." -- Teller
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish (Muslim) Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. --Tom Paine
I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain.
Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. --Gene Roddenberry - Creator of Star Trek
It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. --Mark Twain
I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose. --Clarence Darrow
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means.
Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925
Pray, n:. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Now now, my good man: this is no time for making enemies.
Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
Napolean
Which is it: is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
Nietzsche
Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz
At first I wanted to be a missionary, then I met one.
Dr. T. Barry Brazelton
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Carl Sagan
It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions.
Bertrand Russell
The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.
Catholic Church's decision against Galileo
Where prayer, amulets and incantations work it is only a manifestation of the patient's belief.
Hippocrates
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Joseph Conrad
If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good.
Morris Cohen
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
Bertrand Russell
It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty.
Ilka Chase
If the Bible and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree?
Robert G. Ingersoll
The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on behalf of some superpersonal force: the Race, the Party, History, the proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence he may safely do anything in their service.
Lloyd Billingsley, "Religion's Rebel Son: Fanaticism in Our Time"
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.
Albert Einstein
The trouble with born again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.
Herb Caen
RELIGIOUS ACCUSATION: Atheism is a religion!
ATHEIST REPLY: Like baldness is a hair colour?
Anon
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Thomas Paine
At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.
George Bernard Shaw
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
Kurt Vonnegut
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably, some part of him is aware that they are myths, and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dares not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.
Bertrand Russell
Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.
Michel de Montaigne
The theory that you should always treat the religious convictions of other people with respect finds no support in the Gospels.
Arnold Lunn
Why has a religious turn of mind always a tendancy to narrow and harden the heart?
Robert Burns
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
Nietzsche
If you talk to God, you're praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
Thomas Szasz
Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power.
Salman Rushdie
History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
Lazarus Long (Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love")
Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B. F. Skinner
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Bertrand Russell
The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.
George Bernard Shaw
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.
Delo McKown
Faith is a euphemism for prejudice and religion is a euphemism for superstition.
Paul Keller
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
"Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll to to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money!"
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot;
Or he can, but does not want to;
Or he cannot and does not want to.
If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent.
If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked.
But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come evil is in the world?"
If you can't answer a man's argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
In Ottawa the xians put up an "abortion stills a beating heart" poster outside the local abortion clinic. Someone wrote over it:"A christian with a gun stills a beating heart."
Out of convicted rapists, 57% admitted to reading pornography. 95% admitted to reading the Bible.
I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits.... Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration to offer them an asylum.
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 5, 1816
The Treaty of Tripoli
Signed by John Adams
As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....
The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.
-- Treaty of Tripoli (1797), the English version of which was carried unanimously by the Senate, signed into law by John Adams, and translated into Arabic (the original language is by Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul)
What the mind doesn’t understand it worships or fears
-- Alice Walker
A miracle is not an explanation of what we cannot comprehend.
-- Lemuel K. Washburn, "Is The Bible Worth Reading?"
The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.
-- Abraham Lincoln
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson
I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
-- John Adams
"I think that naming your ignorance God and pretending that, having named it, you have converted ignorance to knowledge is a sorry approach to the unknown." -- John Popelish
"Christianity: Safer than a lobotomy, but just as effective." - Anonymous
"Help preserve your child's belief in Santa Claus. Tell him or her that Santa will send them to hell if they don't believe in him." - Anonymous
"Like all religions, the Holy Religion of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both Logic and Faith. We have Faith that She is Pink; we Logically know that She is Invisible, because we can't see Her." - Anonymous, parody created by atheists
"Two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer" - Anonymous
"If you were taught that elves caused rain, every time it rained, you'd see the proof of elves." - Ariex
"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." - Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American author
"To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation." - Peter Atkins
"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." - Cardinal Bellarmine (1615, during the trial of Galileo)
"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet." - Napoleon Bonaparte
"If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going?" - Justin Brown
"Believing is easier than thinking. Hence so many more believers than thinkers." - Bruce Calvert
"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." - Richard Dawkins
"If god wanted people to believe in him, why'd he invent logic then?" - David Feherty, PGA Tour golfer
"When the first swindler met the first moron, the first god was born." - Millor Fernandes
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." - Benjamin Franklin
"Nothing fails like prayer." - Annie Laurie Gaylor
"The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it." - Robert G. Ingersoll
"You say there is but one way to worship the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?" - Chief Red Jacket, Seneca Indian Chieftain
"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies." - Thomas Jefferson
"When the missionaries first came to our land, they had the Bibles and we had the land. Fifty years later, we had the Bibles and they had the land." - Jomo Kenyatta, first President of Kenya after independence
"Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money" - Leon Lederman
"I don't really miss god but I sure miss Santa Claus!" - Courtney Love
"Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof" - Ashley Montagu
"Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes" - Jawaharlal Nehru
"They came with a Bible and their religion- stole our land, crushed our spirit... and now tell us we should be thankful to the 'Lord' for being saved." - Chief Pontiac, American Indian Chieftain
"What is the nature of God? His nature is entirely dependent upon the age or culture that has reinvented him." - Solomon Skink
"I do not believe I have any immortality. The greatest evil in the world today is the Christian religion." - H. G. Wells
When you understand why you dismiss other gods, you'll understand why I dismiss yours.
"Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high-powered rifle and scope. "--P.J. O'Rourke
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959)
Humor:
Christian: I'll pray for you.
Atheist: Then I'll think for both of us.
"Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing 'does not!'"
"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion."
..........Robert M. Pirsig
"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians, Your Christians are so unlike your Christ"
..........Mahatma Gandhi
"The world holds two classes of men: intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
..........Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri
"If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction."
..........Judith Hayes
"Killing for peace is like fucking for chastity"
..........Author Unknow
"If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you."
There are none more ignorant and useless, than they that seek answers on their knees, with their eyes closed.
"'God is as real as I am', the old man said. I was relieved since I knew Santa wouldn't lie to me..."
..........Author Unknown
I was born a heretic. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
Susan B. Anthony (Reformer and Suffragist)
"I don’t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life."
- Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist
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