Best 2951 quotes in «atheism quotes» category

The soul must have its chosen sewers to carry away its ordure. This function is performed by persons, relationships, professions, the fatherland, the world, or finally, for the really arrogant - I mean our modern pessimists - by the Good God himself.

The Spirit lurks within the Flesh Like Tides within the Sea That make the Water live, estranged What would the Either be?

The spirit of the times can haunt even the atheists.

The spirit of dogmatic theology poisons anything it touches.

The star of the Magi which pointed so unerringly to the cradle of Christ points not less unerringly to one of the sources from which Christ came.

The state authorities have no place in the church of God, no right to control and persecute the conscience.

The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought.

The story of the creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much, but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism.

The struggle against atheism is foremost and of necessity a struggle against the inadequacy of our own theism.

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.

The supernatural Christ of the New Testament, the god of orthodox Christianity, is dead. But priestcraft lives and conjures up the ghost of this dead god to frighten and enslave the masses of mankind. The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars, and miseries than any other name has caused. The darkest wrongs are still inspired by it. The wails of anguish that went up from Kishenev, Odessa, and Bialystok still vibrate in our ears.

The Supernatural is only the Natural disclosed.

The supernatural does not exist.

The supreme religious test of our social order is the hideous commerce of prostitution.

The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.

The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances.

The "terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.

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.

The theist must present an intelligible description of god. Until he does so, god makes no more sense than unie; both are cognitively empty, and any attempt at proof is logically absurd.

The thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did; saying that which is made, is, and that which made it, is not. But this folly is infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing.

The things of this world take up too much of my time, of which indeed I have too little left, to undertake anything like a reformation in religion.

The time has come for honest men to denounce false teachers and attack false gods.

The time has come to knock off this religion business in American politics. There's no end to the mischief that can occur. It is like putting nitroglycerine in a Waring blender.

The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.

The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions; by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.

The truly great consider, first, how they may gain the approbation of God, and, secondly, that of their own conscience. Having done this, they would then willingly conciliate the good opinion of their fellow-men. But the truly little reverse the thing. The primary object with them is to secure the applause of their fellow-men; and having effected this, the approbation of God and their own conscience may follow on as they can.

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas – complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse.

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.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

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.

The Typical American? He is sent to school Little or much, where he imbibes the rule Of safety first and comfort; in his youth He joins the church and ends the quest of truth.

The United States Constitutional Convention, except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.

The universal cosmic process was not created by any god or man.

The union of church and state put the church under a political control... The church was thoroughly subordinated to the state.

The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind.

The United States furnishes the first example in history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control of religion.

The United States is not a Christian nation. It is a great nation with Christians, among others, in it. But our greatness is based on the fact that there is no official religion.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

The very idea of carrying my memory into eternity devastated me, and I took refuge in atheism.

The use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible.

The very word woman in the writings of the church fathers stood for the basest of temptations... As women were lowered in the moral scale because of their identification with her at the very bottom of the pit, so they cannot rise themselves save as they succeed in lifting her with whose sins they are weighed.

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

The web of this world is woven of Necessity and Chance. Woe to him who has accustomed himself from his youth up to find something necessary in what is capricious, and who would ascribe something like reason to Chance and make a religion of surrendering to it.

The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.

The whole world is men's bloody fantasies.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

The whole story is about change. We are very lucky that the earth's history is recorded in fossilized remains. And we can see the changes. Unfortunately, there will always be gaps in our knowledge, but there is no doubt that we and everything living today has evolved.

The word religion has such bad connotations for me, that it's been responsible for wars, and it shouldn't be that way at all, it's just the way the meaning of the word has evolved to me. I have to wonder what we did on this planet before religion.

The word heretic ought to be a term of honour.