Best 2951 quotes in «atheism quotes» category

Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.

Government is contemptuous of true religion when it confiscates the taxes of Caesar to finance the things of God.

Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of Rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations, to prevent it in others.

Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd.

Had the Bible been in clear straightforward language, had the ambiguities and contradictions been edited out, and had the language been constantly modernised to accord with contemporary taste it would almost certainly have been, or become, a work of lesser influence.

Had this author [Sir W Drummond Academical Questions, chap. iii.], instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher.

Hallucinations and illusions are not facts useful for scientific investigation.

Has science ever retreated? No! It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat.

Has creation a final purpose at all, and if so why is it not attained immediately, why does perfection not exist from the very beginning?

Hatred, for the man who is not engaged in it, is a little like the odor of garlic for one who hasn't eaten any.

Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, in effect, be made illegal to imply ridicule of a religion or to lampoon religious figures.

He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know.

"Heaven help us," said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another.

He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

Hell has been conceived as a police institution, to inspire fear in this world. But the worst of it all is that it no longer frightens anyone, and therefore it will have to be closed down.

Help yourself, then God will also help you!

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.

Heretics were most often bitterly persecuted for the their least deviation from accepted belief. It was precisely their obstinacy about trifles that irritated the righteous to madness.

"Heresy," by the way, simply means "choice." It came to mean "thoughtcrime," implying it was blasphemy to presume to choose your own belief instead of swallowing what the bishops spoonfed you.

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.

Heresy makes for progress.

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.

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

Heresy is a word which, when it is used without passion, signifies a private opinion. So the different sects of the old philosophers, Academians, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, &c., were called heresies.

Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a go of it. We've only ourselves.

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.

He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.

He was extremely reticent in his religious sentiments, at least in all that he wrote. Allusions to his belief are rarely, if ever, to be met with in his correspondence.

He stripped off the armor of institutional friendships To dedictate his soul To the terrible deities of Truth and Beauty.

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

He who does not believe in hell is in the greatest danger of landing there.

Historically, it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him.

Historical refutation as the definitive refutation.- In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God - today one indicates how the belief that there is a God arose and how this belief acquired its weight and importance: a counter-proof that there is no God thereby becomes superfluous.- When in former times one had refuted the 'proofs of the existence of God' put forward, there always remained the doubt whether better proofs might not be adduced than those just refuted: in those days atheists did not know how to make a clean sweep.

He who tries to flee from God takes refuge in himself.

Highly technical philosophical arguments of the sort many philosophers favor are absent here. That is because I have a prior problem to deal with. I have learned that arguments, no matter how watertight, often fall on deaf ears. I am myself the author of arguments that I consider rigorous and unanswerable but that are often not such much rebutted or even dismissed as simply ignored.

His worst fault is, he's given to prayer; he is something peevish that way.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason, that if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you.

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.

How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment.

How can any woman believe that a loving and merciful God would, in one breath, command Eve to multiply and replenish the earth, and in the next, pronounce a curse upon her maternity? I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or gave out the laws about women which he is accused of doing.

How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones?

How do I know the Bible isn't the word of God? Well if it was the word of God it would be clear and easy to understand...considering God was the creator of LANGUAGE!

How many prison years in the years since Christ!

How is it that the Church produced no geometer in her autocratic reign of twelve hundred years?

However far back we may be able to trace the - so to speak - internal history of the Universe, there can be no question of arguing that this or that external origin is either probable or improbable. We do not have, and we necessarily could not have, experience of other Universes to tell us that Universes, or Universes with these particular features, are the work of Gods, or of Gods of this or that particular sort.

How unfortunate for mankind that the Lord is reported by Holy Writ as having said 'Vengeance is mine!'

How some dare scorn (as if a fabulous lie) that they should rise whom death to dust doth bind -- and like to beasts, a beastly life they lead, who naught attend save death when they are dead.