Best 2951 quotes in «atheism quotes» category

At least to pray is left - is left Oh Jesus - in the Air - I know not which thy chamber is - I'm knocking everywhere.

At Oxford University, the certainties of my atheist faith (and atheism is a faith) began to crumble

A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.

Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom.

A voice behind me asked, "Where is God? Where is He? Where can He be now?" and a voice within me answered: "Where? Here He is - He has been hanged here, on these gallows.

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion...[has] divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.

Basic atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief. There is a difference between believing there is no god and not believing there is a god - both are atheistic, though popular usage has ignored the latter.

Believing in Hell must distort every judgement on this life.

Because of the confusion surrounding the term "agnosticism," it would seem better to use the very similar term "rationalism" in its place when referring to the original Huxleyan meaning of the term. The use of "rationalist" for "agnostic" would also seem to be less ambiguous.

Because we are unqualifiedly and without reservation against any system of denominational schools, maintained by the adherents of any creed with the help of state aid, therefore, we as strenuously insist that the public schools shall be free from sectarian influences, and above all, free from any attitude of hostility to the adherents of any particular creed.

Before receiving your instruction, I must tell you what happened to me one day. I had just had a closet built at the end of my garden. I heard a mole arguing with a cockchafer; 'Here's a fine structure,' said the mole, 'it must have been a very powerful mole who did this work.' 'You're joking,' said the cockchafer; 'it's a cockchafer full of genius who is the architect of this building.' From that moment I resolved never to argue.

Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the teapot, but that doesn't mean you treat the likelihood of its existence as being on all fours with its non-existence.

Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a seance.

Beware of the community in which blasphemy does not exist: underneath, atheism runs rampant.

Beware of the fury of the patient man.

Beware of those who say: "I know this too well to be able to express it." For if they cannot do so, this is because they don't know it or because out of laziness they stopped at the outer crust.

Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation.

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.

Between religion's this is and poetry's but suppose this is, there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.

Beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.

Blame is for God and small children.

Biographies by preachers are of no value. If they admire a man they always make him a saint, while if they dislike one, they always make him a demon.

Blasphemy is what an old dogma screams at a new truth.

Blindness to suffering is an inherent consequence of natural selection. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.

Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing.

Both of my parents would say they were atheists, so where I inherited my connection to God I don't know. But it's natural. No Bible, no Torah, just the love religion.

Both of them were very good and kind - the one who went to church and the one who didn't. And no doubt from them I learned to like both Christians and sinners equally well.

Bryan - a great friend of mine, by the way - had a Neanderthal type of head, Burbank says. As to Riley, he has not even the oratorical skill of Bryan. The whole movement is based on the poor whites of the south.

But after he was pleased to reveal himself to me I did presently, like Abraham, run to Hagar. And after that he did let me see the atheism of my own heart, for which I begged of the Lord that it might not remain in my heart.

Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.

Burns had his faults, his frailties. He was intensely human. Still, I would rather appear at the "Judgment Seat" drunk, and be able to say that I was the author of "A man's a man for 'a that," than to be perfectly sober and admit that I had lived and died a Scotch Presbyterian.

But amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect?

But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments?

But honest men do not pretend to know; they are candid and sincere; they love the truth; they admit their ignorance, and they say, We do not know.

But evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart!

But in America, if you're an atheist, you lose.

But let me open up my heart to you completely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I bear not being a god! Hence, there areno gods. I drew this conclusion, to be sure--but now it draws me.

But I still don't know what kind of monster was this god, until I saw that Jesus deliberately hid his light under a bushel. "Tell no one" was often his command.

Christ can very well stand as an heroic figure. The hero need not be of wisdom all compounded. Also he is not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on to him.

But the context of religion is a great background for doing science. In the words of Psalm 19, 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork'. Thus scientific research is a worshipful act, in that it reveals more of the wonders of God's creation.

Carl did not want to believe. He wanted to know.

Certain things are complete superstition and have no validity at all in the Bible. Yeah. They're just the antithesis of everything that is correct intellectually.

Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.

Choices always were a problem for you. What you need is someone strong to guide you. Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow, what you need is someone strong to use you - like me.

Christianity provided man for the first time with supernatural beings who, he knew, could neither envy nor ridicule him.

Christianity ... that musty old theology, which already has its grave clothes on, and is about to be buried... A wall of Bible, brimstone, church and corruption has hitherto hemmed women into nothingness.

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded. That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

Christianity accepted as given a metaphysical system derived from several already existing and mutually incompatible systems.