Best 2951 quotes in «atheism quotes» category

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

One would fancy that the zealots in atheism would be exempt from the single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervor of religion. But so it is, that irreligion is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended upon it.

One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted.

Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task.

Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.

Only he is a truly ethical, a truly human being, who has the courage to see through his own religious feelings and needs.

[O]nly if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.

Only so you can appeal to your God and pray Him to support and bless your courage, your work, your perseverance, your strength, your resolution, and with all these your claim on life.

Only the very ignorant are perfectly satisfied that they know. To the common man the great problems are easy. He has no trouble in accounting for the universe. He can tell you the origin and destiny of man and the why and wherefore of things.

Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Zeus will send you.

Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

Opposition to divine sovereignty is essentially atheism.

Opinions don't affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you're rational

Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes. Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers.

Orthodoxy is a corpse that doesn't know it's dead.

Organized religion, being founded on superstition, is, perforce, not scientific. And all that which is not scientific - that is, truthful - must be bolstered up by force, fear and falsehood. Thus we always find slavery and organized religion going hand in hand.

Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one.

Other world? There is no other world; here or nowhere is the whole fact.

Our Constitution... has not left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, were it possible that any of these should consider a conquest over the conscience of men either attainable or applicable to any desirable purpose.

Our contention is not for mere toleration, but for absolute liberty. There is a wide difference between toleration and liberty. Toleration implies that somebody falsely claims the right to tolerate. Toleration is a concession, while liberty is a right. Toleration is a matter of expediency, while liberty is a matter of principle.

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.

Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.

Our religion is Christ, our politics Fatherland!

Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.

Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.

Out of the doctrine of original sin grew the crimes and miseries of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft; woman becoming the helpless victim of all these delusions.

Over our history there are always those who want to take this wall of separation and remove a brick here or there or damage it more than that. I think one has to be vigilant and constantly on the alert.

Parsons always seem to be specially horrified about things like sunbathing and naked bodies. They don't mind poverty and misery and cruelty to animals nearly as much.

Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism.

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

Pascal makes no attempt in this most famous argument to show that his Roman Catholicism is true or probably true. The reasons which he suggests for making the recommended bet on his particular faith are reasons in the sense of motives rather than reasons in the sense of grounds. Conceding, if only for the sake of the present argument, that we can have no knowledge here, Pascal tries to justify as prudent a policy of systematic self-persuasion, rather than to provide grounds for thinking that the beliefs recommended are actually true.

Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other.

People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.

People are bursting out of the closet, rejecting their parents' wishes to keep the faith. Atheism is becoming mainstream.

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

People want to be at the center of the Universe...and they're going to flock to anybody who tells them that.

People value religion on the basis of cost, and they don't value the cheapest ones the most. Religions that ask nothing get nothing.

Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.

People who commit crimes should be responsible for those crimes. It doesn't matter whether they're priests or ministers or atheists.

Piety's hard enough to take among the poor who have to practice it. A rich man's piety stinks. It's insufferable.

Personal religious convictions have no place in political campaigns or in dictating public policy.

Philosophy for me is essentially atheistic. Now that's an anxious atheism. It's an atheism that is anxious because it inhabits questions that were resolved religiously in the pre-modern period.

Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?

Persecution on racial and religious grounds has absolutely no place in a nation given over to liberty.

Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, 'Will it bring you nearer to God?'

Please, with the God talk. Hate to break it to you, but there is no God.

Policies are judged by their consequences but crusades are judged by how good they make the crusaders feel.

Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy.