Page of Quotes

Found posted in /atheism on Reddit. by alt_spaceghoti and SeeMarkFly on this thread:


“Secular humanists suspect there is something more gloriously human about resisting the religious impulse; about accepting the cold truth, even if that truth is only that the universe is as indifferent to us as we are to it.” ~ Tom Flynn

“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” ~ Thomas Paine

“Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” ~ Seneca the Younger

“It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” ~ Mark Twain

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” ~ Douglas Adams

“Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.” ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

“Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.” ~ Madalyn Murray O’Hair

“Faith: not wanting to know what is true.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

“I’m not against religion in the sense that I feel I can’t tolerate it, but I think written into the rubric of religion is the certainty of its own truth. And since there are 6,000 religions currently on the face of the earth, they can’t all be right. And only the secular spirit can guarantee those freedoms and it’s the secular spirit that they contest.” ~ Ian Mcewan

“A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” ~ Albert Einstein

“I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.” ~ Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Hippocrates (460 BCE-370 BCE) “Men think epilepsy divine, because they don’t understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything divine in the universe.”

Epicurus (341 BCE-270 BCE) “Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Aurelius, Marcus (121 CE-180 CE) “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

al-Maʿarrī, Abū al-ʿAlā (1057) “The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: Those with brains, but no religion, And those with religion, but no brains.”

Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662) "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

Arouet, François-Marie aka.Voltaire (1694-1778) “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865) “The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.”

Bierce, Ambrose (1842-1914)“A Christian is one who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.”

Nietzsche,Friedrich (1844-1900) "Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or is God merely a mistake of man"

Nietzsche,Friedrich (1844-1900) “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900) “Religion is like a blind man in a black room looking for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it. “

Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947) “The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.”

Goldman, Emma (1869-1940) “Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.” The same can be said about religion.

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955) “A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”

Crisp, Quentin (1908-1999) „I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.“

Asimov, Isaac (1920-1992) “The Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."

Roddenberry, Gene (1921-1991) “We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”

Pirsig, Robert (1928-2017) “When one man suffers from delusion, it is insanity, when many men suffer from delusion, it is called religion.”

Weinberg, Steven (1933-2021) If the only thing keeping you from being a horrible person is your religion, you are already a horrible person.

Weinberg, Steven (1933-2021) “Science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible not to believe in God”

Weinberg, Steven (1933-2021) “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

Twain, Mark (1835-1910) “It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”

Twain, Mark (1835-1910) “The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.”

Twain, Mark (1835-1910) “The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

Buffalo Calf Road Woman (1850-1879) “We are survivors of genocide committed by Christians in the name of their god. Jesus did not die for us. Our ancestors did.” Northern Cheyenne Indian warrior

Roberts, Stephen (1917-1999) “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

Carlin, George (1937-2008) “May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.”

Mauthausen concentration camp (1938-1945) “If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.”

Moriarty, John (1938-2007) “If god has a problem with me, it can tell me itself. When you speak on behalf of your deity, it sounds more like your opinion.”

Zappa, Frank (1940-1993) “Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned--I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.”

Pratchett, Terry (1948-2015) “The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those that think they have found it.”

Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “God loves you so much he created hell in case you don't love him back.”

Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”

Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “We must be afraid, we must also be forced to love someone who we fear, the essence of sado-masochism.”

Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”

Jeni, Richard (1957-2007) “You're basically killing each other to see who's got the best imaginary friend"

Harwood, William (1992) “The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence.”

Lugeons, Noah (1997) “As atheists, we stand in awe of a lot of things… but perhaps the thing I’m most in awe of is the stupidity it takes to look past the entire universe of things that actually exist and stand in awe of something that doesn’t.”

Harris, Tracie (2018) "You either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a God who simply watches it and says, ‘When you’re done, I’m going to punish you.’If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That’s the difference between me and your God."

Mark aka. SeeMarkFly (2022) "When you hear the truth, does the source truly matter?"

Brown, Justin (age 31 years) “If the bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going.”

Henderson, Bobby (age 42) “I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.”

O’Briain, Dara (age 50) “Just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”

Dillahunty,Matt (age 53) “A god that doesn’t manifest in reality is indistinguishable from a god that doesn’t exist.”

Harris, Sam (age 55) "Belief is textbook narcissism. To say God is good because of some positive thing that happened to you, while at the same time a priest is raping a child, is peak narcissism. Given all the good that your God does NOT visit upon others, to believe he is a force for good resulting from the good you feel he visits upon YOU, is not just arrogant, it's morally reprehensible."

Harris, Sam (age 55) “If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”

Harris, Sam (age 55) “We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.”

Ra, Aron (age 59) “Any being worthy of worship would not require it."

Izzard, Eddie (age 60) “If there is a god, his plan is very similar to someone not having a plan.”

Gervais, Ricky (age 61) "Basically, you deny one less god than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more."

Gervais, Ricky (age 61) "It's better to have questions you can't answer than answers you can't question."

Gervais, Ricky (age 61) "Science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction, any holy book… and destroyed it, in a thousand years’ time, that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back, because all the same tests would [produce] the same result."

Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “It annoys me that the burden of proof is on us. It should be "you came up with the idea, why do you believe it?" I can tell you I've got super powers. But I can't go up to people saying "prove I can't fly", because then they'll say "what do you mean prove you can't fly? Prove you can!"

Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “It’s a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It’s the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for.”

Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “Religion’s greatest trick wasn’t convincing some people that there was a god that was all powerful, it was convincing everyone else that you couldn’t ridicule the idea”

Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “saying atheism is a belief system is like saying "not going skiing is a hobby". I've never been skiing. It's my favorite past time. I literally do it all the time”

Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “The more you try to know, the harder it is to believe."

Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “there have been nearly 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are just silly, made up nonsense. But not yours. Yours is real?”

Bennington, Ron (age 63) "All Jesus had to say is 'The world is round, and there's Indians' and I would have bought into the whole f#@+ing thing"

Tyson, Neil deGrasse (age 63) “The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.”

Tyson, Neil deGrasse (age 63) “I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.”

Krauss, Lawrence M. (age 68) “We are all stardust”

Lamott, Anne (age 68) "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

Hodgell Patricia "Pat" C. (age 71) That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.

Grayling, A.C. (age 73) “To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.”

Maalouf, Amin (age 73) “Traditions deserve to be respected only insofar as they are respectable--that is, exactly insofar as they themselves respect the fundamental rights of men and women.”

Black, Lewis (age 74) "The old testament is a wonderful story told to people that lived in the desert to keep their mind off the fact that they did not have air conditioning."

Father Guido Sarducci aka. Don Novello (age 79) “If God made man in his own image, why aren't we all invisible?”

Dawkins, Richard (age 81) “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

Unknown You keep believing, I'll keep evolving.

Unknown “The Aztec gods showed up only to the Aztecs for the same reasons that the Japanese gods showed up only to the Japanese, and Yahweh only showed up only in the Middle East.”

Unknown “When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or cease to be honest.”

Unknown “When inventing a god, it's important to make sure it's invisible, inaudible, and imperceptible in every way. Otherwise, people will be skeptical when it appears to no one, is silent, and does nothing.”

Professor Hubert Farnsworth (Futurama) “Just knowing we're in the same genus makes me embarrassed to call myself homo.”

Evangelical Pastafarism “I find it funny that some people are comparing John Lennon and God....I mean, he was great, and all, but he’s no John Lennon!”

There’s an historical commonality among the world’s three most-practiced religions and it ain’t peace.

Atheism is a religion like "off" is a television channel.