Best 2951 quotes in «atheism quotes» category

We have the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should tolerate even them whenever we can do so without running a great risk; but the risk may become so great that we cannot allow ourselves the luxury.

We in the United States are pluralistic respecting ultimate beliefs. Profound values exist apart from a devotion to a god. Indeed, those who discriminate against nonbelievers flout the principle of religious tolerance that they often profess.

We know that there is no absolute knowledge, that there are only theories; but we forget this. The better educated we are, the harder we believe in axioms.

We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.

We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it. So there is a chance that the best of all possible mathematics will be created out of physicists' attempts to describe nature.

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

We live our lives for our life's sake, rather than for illusions about rewards and satisfaction after we're dead.

Well Mike, I'm abnormal.

Well, when I get new information, I rethink my position. What, sir, do you do with new information?

Well, you know, Thomas Jefferson, who was the author of the Declaration of Independence said he wouldn't have any atheists in his cabinet because atheists wouldn't swear an oath to God. That was Jefferson and we have never had any Muslims in the cabinet.

We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses - in short, from fewer premises.

We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.

We need to be skeptical of utopianists who offer unreliable totalistic visions of other worlds and strive to take us there. We need some ideals, but we also need to protect ourselves from the miscalculations and misadventures of visionaries.

We place no reliance On virgin or pigeon; Our Method is Science, Our Aim is Religion.

We seek to create a united Democratic and non-racial society.

We shouldn't even need the word 'atheism'. If people didn't invent ridiculous imaginary gods, rational people wouldn't have to deny them.

We should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

...We then examine a particular coding system in DNA and discover that UI [universal information] is conveyed within the genes. Using this DNA evidence and scientific laws governing UI as premises, we are able to develop sound, logical deductions. This leads us to the following conclusion: the God of the Bible exists and He is responsible for originating and embedding Universal Information into biological life.

We sucked in atheism with our canned milk.

We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so.

We use up words like 'spiritual' so fast in this culture. Twenty years ago spiritual had a distinct meaning. But now there's a lot of jack-off thinkers who just love to talk about the spiritual. And there is a lot of bogus - is bogosity a word? It should be - a lot of bogosity in these spiritual seekers. So you have to find another way to express it. I just call it 'how I fit'.

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

What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory; and found it more convenient to indulge his depraved appetites, and pay an exorbitant price for absolution, than listen to the suggestions of reason, and work out his own salvation: in a word, was not the separation of religion from morality the work of the priests...?

What can be accomplished by a few principles is not effected by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature, and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle, which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

What do I believe? I believe in God, if he exists.

What chiefly concerns and alarms many of us are the problems arising from religious fanaticism. As long as large numbers of militant enthusiasts are persuaded that they alone have access to the truth, and that the rest of us are infidels, we remain under threat. Lord Acton's famous phrase about power can be used of another danger. Dogma tends to corrupt, and absolute dogma corrupts absolutely.

Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth.

What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being.

Whatever good you would do out of fear of punishment, or hope of reward hereafter, the Atheist would do simply because it is good; and being so, he would receive the far surer and more certain reward, springing from well-doing, which would constitute his pleasure, and promote his happiness.

Whatever may be God's future, we cannot forget His past.

Whatever one's religion in his private life may be, for the officeholder, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts - including the First Amendment and the strict separation of church and state.

Whatever you have to do to have a good time, let's get on with it, so long as it doesn't cause a murder.

What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 flight to Oslo?

What good deed can government do for religion? The best deed of all: leave it free and unencumbered, burdened by neither enmity nor amity.

What has changed is that nothing has changed... that's what has made me more unhappy than everything else.

What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them?

What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.

What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.

What! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well? Infinite cruelty rather, that made everlasting hell, Made us, foreknew us, foredoom'd us, and does what he will with his own; Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan.

What is the use of assuring Fundamentalists that science is compatible with religion. They retort at once, Certainly not with our religion.

What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.

What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation.

What sense or thought do they have? They follow the popular singers, and they take the crowd as their teacher.

What Marxism calls atheism is basically the negation of an idol, which sometimes bears the name of God.

What sort of god would deliberately create a world in which his creatures must eat one another to live?

What makes our opponents useful is that they allow us to believe that without them we would be able to realize our goals.