Best 1717 quotes in «atheist quotes» category

New York was the only really hostile city. Perhaps there is a certain element of the lumpen literati that is so dogmatically atheist and materialist and Earth-bound that it finds the grandeur of space and the myriad mysteries of cosmic intelligence anathema.

[Nikola Tesla] said he had no interest in the spiritual. He didn't believe in telepathy, didn't believe in any of that stuff, didn't believe in any religion, and he just thought all these people were being superstitious and wanted them to go away. And in that way he was very close to H.P. Lovecraft, who was almost a believing atheist.

No atheist says there is no god!

No church property is taxed and so the infidel and the atheist and the man without religion are taxed to make up the deficit.

Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.

No man will say, "There is no God" 'till he is so hardened in sin that it has become his interest that there should be none to call him to account.

None of the miracles with which ancient histories are filled, occurred under scientific conditions. Observation never once contradicted, teaches us that miracles occur only in periods and countries in which they are believed in and before persons disposed to believe in them.

Nonetheless, it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.

No one ever dies an atheist.

No one knows loneliness like an atheist. When an average person feels isolated, he can call through the depths of his soul to One who knows him and sense an answer. An atheist cannot allow himself that luxury, for he has to crush the urge and remind himself of its absurdity.

No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth". To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. But then again, I can get pretty arrogant.

No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.

[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

Nothing could be more idiotic and absurd than the doctrine of the trinity.

Nothing draws people more quickly away from religion than an open mind.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist. I repeat it. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist.

Not only is this not love; I think it is the most diabolical unfairness that was ever taught or devised.

Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an atheist.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

Objectivism advocates reason as man's sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that's all.

Now, I'm an atheist. I really don't believe for a moment that our moral sense comes from a god.

Obama has already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to change the limits of what one can say publicly. His greatest achievement up to now is that, in his refined non-provocative way, he has introduced into public speech topics which had hitherto been de facto unsayable: the continuing importance of race in politics, the positive role of atheists in public life, the necessity to talk with "enemies" like Iran or Hamas, and so on. This is just what US politics needs today more than anything, if it is to break out of its gridlock: new words which will change the way we think and act.

Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position.

Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes.... The only people who still call hurricanes acts of God are the people who write insurance forms.

Once Steve Fuller said that there is this idea that your responsibility as an intellectual is just to speak the truth as you see it. But actually, you should be more appreciative of what needs to be said. I don't think that's ever an excuse to say something you don't believe is true - but sometimes the emphasis has to be different. Well, if I'm talking to an audience of hardline atheists, I'll be trying to unsettle them a bit more, whereas, if I'm speaking to an audience of believers, I'll be giving them more of the pros of atheism. It's about having a sensitivity to context.

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

Of course his dust would be absorbed in other living things and to that degree at least he would exist again, though it was plain enough that the specific combination which was he would never exist again.

Ok to appoint atheists or agnostics-no litmus test of faith.

Once you have awakened to the question of faith, you cannot simply return to your everyday agenda like a committed atheist could. You cannot retreat to the comforts of atheism.

One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.

One great way to mess with devout Christians and atheists would be if Jesus came back and said, By the way, you know I'm fake, right?

One would like to believe that people who think of themselves as devout Christians would also behave in a manner that is in according with Christian ethics. But pastorally and existentially, I know that this is not the case, and never has been.

One odd thing about the current debate between religious people and atheists is that the participants don't seem to care that they entirely fail to communicate with the other side. They therefore have no account of why the religious or the atheists believe what they do, except that they are stupid or deluded. I think philosophers should try and make sense of their disputes with their opponents as far as possible without treating them as idiots. This applies to the religious participants in the debate as much as to the atheists.

One of the things that made me suffer no regret when I was called away from the cramped intellectual jail of atheism into a wider and more wonderful world, was my growing conviction that my fellow atheists were shallow, men without insight into real human nature.

One thing I have no worry about is whether God exists. But it has occurred to me that God has Alzheimer's and has forgotten we exist.

Only faith in Christ gives rise to a culture contrary to egotism and death.

Only Atheists have morals, the religious have reward and punishment. That's not morality, that's sucking up.

On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis.

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

Organizing atheists is a bit like herding cats; They are on the whole too intelligent and independent minded to lend themselves to being herded.

Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people

O Reader! hast thou eer stood to see The Holly-tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceies Its glossy leaes Ordered by an Intelligence so wise As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

Organized religion: The world's largest pyramid scheme.

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast.

Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

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

Our Constitution was not intended to be used by ... any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us.