Atheism Quotations | Page 7

True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

Assuredly whatsoever things are fabled to exist in deep Acheron, these all exist in this life. There is no wretched Tantalus, fearing the great rock that hangs over him in the air and frozen with vain terror. Rather, it is in this life that fear of the gods oppresses mortals without cause, and the rock they fear is any that chance may bring.

Long time men lay oppress'd with slavish fear Religion's tyranny did domineer ... At length a mighty one of Greece began To assert the natural liberty of man, By senseless terrors and vain fancies let To slavery. Straight the conquered phantoms fled.

Those things that are in the light we behold from darkness.

Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

Epicurus ... whose genius surpassed all humankind, extinguished the light of others, as the stars are dimmed by the rising sun.

...if one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods.

Rest, brother, rest. Have you done ill or well Rest, rest, There is no God, no gods who dwell Crowned with avenging righteousness on high Nor frowning ministers of their hate in hell.

Since you must admit that there is nothing outside the universe, it can have no limit and is accordingly without end or measure. It makes no odds in which part of it you may take your stand; whatever spot anyone may occupy, the universe stretches away from him just the same in all directions without limit.

There is so much wrong with the world. (tanta stat praedita culpa)

Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight.

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death.

Fear is the mother of all gods ... Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods.

Too often in time past, religion has brought forth criminal and shameful actions... How many evils has religion caused?

The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.

Death pays all debts.

It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick; and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.

He's a smart man, so I am assuming he will do it.

I think the Constitution has been upheld. I think they made the right decision.

One day I was just looking at the coins is what brought this up. I saw "In God We Trust" on my coins. I said, "I don't trust in God," what is this? And I recalled there was something in the Constitution that said you're not allowed to do that and so I did some research. And as soon as I did the research, I realized the law seemed to be on my side and I filed the suit. It's a cool thing to do. Everyone should try it.

If your reality is the same as my reality, then you're in trouble.

Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats, well here I am.

...the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don't expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue - it's been happening every day for a long time.

Nowhere in the Gospels is intelligence praised as a virtue.

We will no longer be oppressed by the fascism called Christianity. We will no longer be oppressed by the mentality of the police state.

God is just a statistics.

Christians are losers.

There is no intercessor, angel, mediator, between man and God; for man can speak and God hear, each for himself. He requires no advocates to plead for men.

All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again.

I wanted each woman to be a rebellious Vashti, not an Esther.

You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.

And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: "Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise." And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly.

In the absence of fear there is little faith.

The loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced that which you thought would deliver the ultimate, and it has just let you down.

I am thoroughly convinced that when the last chapter of humanity is written, we will find that the implications of atheism, i.e., living without God, if consistently carried through, will have made life plainly unlivable within the limits of reason or even common sense

To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, “I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge

My writing is remarkably non-confessional; you actually learn very little about me.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, has a more direct bearing on the moral choices made by individuals or the purposes pursued by society than belief or disbelief in God.

I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge

Atheism is an exercise in intellectual contempt.

Atheism is not the denial of the existence of God, but having doubts as to whether God is conscious.

Remember always that we are pattern-seeking primates who are especially adept at finding patterns with emotional meaning.

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.

Deism, historically, produces atheism. First you make God a landlord, then an absent landlord, then he becomes simply absent.

There is in the clergy of all Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the spirit of the gospel as it is from the intrepid assertion and vindication of truth.

The graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference.

"Respecting" means concerning or with reference to. But it also means with respect~ that is "reverence," "good-will," "regard" to. Taking into account this richer meaning, the Establishment Clause, in banning laws that concern religion, especially prohibits those that pay homage to religion.

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.

Relativity. Gravity. Quantum. Electrodynamics. Evolution. Each of these theories is true, whether or not you believe in them.

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.

I object to religion in science classrooms not because it's religion but because it's not science.

God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.

When men live as if there were no God, it becomes expedient for them that there should be none.

Doing things in secret that you are ashamed for others to know is practical atheism. God's knowing doesn't count?

Fundamentalists of different religions have more in common with each other than they do with the moderates of their own religions.

We all behave as though what we think is true, is true.

The essence of Christianity, as I see it, is love. The essence of Humanism (and I'm also a Humanist) is love. At that level, we're not far apart.

The world looks like it was designed. Of course, the Sun also looks like it goes around the Earth. It is only thru science that we know that both of these perceptions are wrong.

Most true believers, when faced with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, will hold on to those beliefs even more strongly.

There is little difference in the knowledge held by those who can't learn and those who won't.

Early America does not deserve to be considered uniquely, distinctly or even predominantly Christian... There is no lost Golden Age to which American Christians may return.

Where doubt there truth is - 'tis her shadow.

"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."

Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.

It's fair to say that the Bible contains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza.

Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.

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.

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

The history of all times and nations teaches us that exactly in the naïve, unshakable belief, furnished by religion in active life of believers, originate the most intense motives for the most significant creative performance, not only in the field of arts and sciences but also in politics.

Standing above the crowd, He had a voice so strong and loud And I swallowed his façade 'cause I'm so Eager to identify with Someone above the ground, Someone who seemed to feel the same, Someone prepared to lead the way, with Someone who would die for me.

Sure, I love fairy tales.

Life feeds on life... feeds on life feeds on life... this is neccesary... this is necessary life feeds on life... feeds on life

I'm not observant, personally, but if I ever see a priest resurrect the dead before my eyes I promise to revisit my atheism.

The truth wears longer than all the gods; for it is only in the truth's service, and for love of it, that people have overthrown the gods and at last God himself. "The truth" outlasts the downfall of the world of gods, for it is the immortal soul of this transitory world of gods; it is Deity itself.

Something which is against natural laws seems to me rather out of the question because it would be a depressive idea about God. It would make God smaller than he must be assumed. When he stated that these laws hold, then they hold, and he wouldn't make exceptions. This is too human an idea. Humans do such things, but not God.

Mr. Lincoln had no hope, and no faith, in the usual acceptation of those words.

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.

If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts.

Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position.

There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense in human life.

It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.

The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for mankind.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.

My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?

Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong.

He must be able to hear them [the counter arguments] from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.

So natural to mankind is intolerance ... that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized.

Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion.

It is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honor.

They amuse themselves by playing an irrelevant ecclesiastical game called "Let's Pretend." Let's pretend that we possess the objective truth of God in our inerrant Scriptures or in our infallible pronouncements or in our unbroken apostolic traditions.

The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.

And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a Jew like me. And so was his father.

To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage.

Religion is based upon blind faith supported by no evidence. Science is based upon confidence that results from evidence - and that confidence can be modified and/or reversed by further observations and experimentation. Science approaches truth, closer and closer, by hard dedicated work. Religion already has it all decided, and it's in the book. It's dogma, unchangeable, and unaffected by reality and whatever facts we come upon in the real world.

First, whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbors, and where they separate, depend upon it, 'Tis for no other cause but quietness sake.

The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact.

Theologians are all alike, of whatever religion or country they may be; their aim is always to wield despotic authority over men's consciences; they therefore persecute all of us who have the temerity to tell the truth.