Quotes
In the Book of Quotes, we will list some thought-provoking quotes from famous Atheists, Agnostics, Deists, and other Freethinkers throughout history. We’ll separate these into categories, to make browsing them easier for the reader. First we start with philosophy, science, and skepticism. Then, we’ll have quotes against theism, on the wastefulness of religion, and pro-Atheism quotes. Next are some positive quotes, followed by a special section of quotes from early American patriots, in honor of the courage of those who sought to create a new type of government free from religious influence. We follow that with quotes from later important American political figures, and finally we end with a section for the most humorous and witty quotes.
Read these and discover the wisdom of Freethinkers from ancient times to the modern day. They will make you think, they may inspire you, and a few might even make you laugh! There are also many collections of quotes on Atheism available on the internet, as well as lists of celebrities who are Atheists or Freethinkers. Check out the Book of Resources for links to some of these sites.
Philosophical Quotes on Atheism
“It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so.”
-- Ernestine Rose, 19th century women’s rights activist
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
-- Stephen F. Roberts, Atheist activist
“God is only a great imaginative experience.”
-- D. H. Lawrence, early 20th century poet
“God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.”
-- John Stuart Mill, 19th century English philosopher
“[I]f I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.”
-- Isaac Asimov, 20th century science fiction author
“If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.”
-- Baron D’Holbach (Paul Henry Thiry), 18th century European philosopher
“When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what it is that I really see there, I am constrained to say, ‘There is no God.’ It is not the works of some God that I see there. … I see no lineaments of personality, no human traits, but an energy upon whose currents solar systems are but bubbles.”
-- John Burroughs, 19th century American naturalist
“You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that’s clear… I will choose Free Will.”
-- Neil Peart (from the Canadian band Rush consisting of Peart, Geddy Lee, and Alex Lifeson) in the song “Free Will” from the 1980 album Permanent Waves
Science Quotes
“We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a higher answer—but none exists.”
-- Stephen Jay Gould, 20th century Harvard University biologist and author
“Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What’s left is magic. And it doesn’t work.”
-- James Randi, magician and paranormal investigator
“The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Science is simply common sense at its best—that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.”
-- Thomas Huxley, 19th century biologist
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
-- Aldous Huxley, early 20th century author and grandson of Thomas Huxley
“When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.”
-- Bertrand Russell, 20th century English mathematician and Nobel-prize-winner in literature
“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”
-- Adam Smith, 18th century Scottish philosopher and economist
“Reason, Observation and Experience—the Holy Trinity of Science—have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect.”
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, famed 19th century Agnostic and prolific author
“…there is no direct evidence, so how could you ask me to believe in God when there’s absolutely no evidence that I can see? I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that’s out there that we haven’t discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don’t know any better.”
-- Jodie Foster, American actress
“A knowledge of the true age of the earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do. And if some of the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest of it be accepted automatically?”
-- Francis Crick, 20th century Nobel-prize-winning scientist and co-discoverer (with James Watson) of DNA molecule
“There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right; they’re the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.”
-- Carl Sagan, 20th century author and star of Cosmos television series
Skepticism Quotes
“We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.”
-- Carl Sagan
“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.”
-- Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), 16th century Portuguese explorer
“It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions. I believe it was Magellan who said, ‘The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the Church.’ On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.”
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
“Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
-- Thomas Huxley
“It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
-- Carl Sagan
“The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances.”
-- Joseph McCabe, English priest who deconverted to Atheism in the late 19th century and wrote about his experiences
“… as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief;”
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, early 19th century English poet and author
“It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.”
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
“To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.”
-- Thomas Paine, 18th century author and American revolutionary
“No amount of belief makes something a fact.”
-- James Randi
“To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage.”
-- James Randi
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
-- Carl Sagan
“The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.”
-- Carl Sagan
“Confronted with the universe, with fields of space sown thick with stars, with all there is of life, the wise man, being asked the origin and destiny of all, replies: ‘I do not know. These questions are beyond the powers of my mind.’ The wise man is thoughtful and modest. He clings to facts. Beyond his intellectual horizon he does not pretend to see. He does not mistake hope for evidence or desire for demonstration. He is honest. He neither deceives himself nor others.”
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
-- Richard Dawkins, English science author
Anti-theism Quotes
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”
-- Steven Weinberg, Nobel-prize-winning scientist and co-discoverer (with Abdul Salam and Sheldon Glashow) of electroweak force theory
“A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.”
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.”
-- Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 18th century French philosopher and author
“The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. ‘You eat this apple, you’re going to be as smart as God. We can’t have that.’”
-- Frank Zappa, 20th century American musician and satirist
“It is thus that the generality of mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attributes to the Divinity, not only the unusual effects which strike them, but moreover the most simple events, of which the causes are the most simple to understand by whomever is able to study them. In a word, man has always respected unknown causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the imaginary colossus of the Divinity.”
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
“The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.”
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 19th century abolitionist and women’s rights activist
“How anyone, in view of the protracted sufferings of the race, can invest the laws of the universe with a tender loving fatherly intelligence, watching, guiding and protecting humanity, is to me amazing.”
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Yet the ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond-jade,
Are only silly puppet gods
That people themselves
Have made.”
-- Langston Hughes, 20th century American poet
“I do not believe I have any immortality. The greatest evil in the world today is the Christian religion.”
-- H. G. Wells, early 20th century English science-fiction writer
“Once people get hung up on theology, they’ve lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.”
-- Gore Vidal, American novelist
“The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.”
-- Gore Vidal
“Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.”
-- Sigmund Freud, influential early 20th century psychologist and author
“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?”
-- Carl Sagan
“Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people’s business. I live by the golden rule: Treat others as you’d want them to treat you. The religious right wants to tell people how to live.”
-- Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, former Navy Seal and professional wrestler
“The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.”
-- Mary Wollstonecraft, 18th century British author and women’s rights activist
“The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children’s ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself all feelings of mercy and compassion, He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes.”
-- Bertrand Russell
“Dear God, don’t know if you noticed, but,
your name is on a lot of quotes in this book.
Us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look.
And all the people that you made in your image
still believing that junk is true.
Well I know it ain’t, and so do you,
dear God.
I can’t believe in, I don’t believe in,
“I won’t believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners, no devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
You’re always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
Those lost at sea and never found,
and it’s the same the whole world ‘round.
The hurt I see helps to compound
that Father, Son and Holy Ghost
is just somebody’s unholy hoax,
and if you’re up there you’d perceive
that my heart’s here upon my sleeve.
If there’s one thing I don’t believe in it’s you…
dear God.”
-- Andy Partridge (from the British band XTC consisting of Partridge, Dave Gregory, and Colin Moulding) in the song “Dear God” from the 1986 album Skylarking
“Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.”
-- Richard Dawkins
Wastefulness of Religion Quotes
“The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H. Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.”
-- Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author
“Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?”
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
“I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized, on this earth, capable of becoming true man, master of his fate and captain of his soul. To attain this I would put priests to work, also, and turn the temples into schools.”
-- Jawaharlal Nehru, 20th century statesman and prime minister of India
“Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.”
-- anonymous
Pro-Atheism Quotes
“All religions are auld wives’ fables, but an honest man has nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come.”
-- Robert Burns, 18th century Scottish poet and publisher of Auld Lang Syne
“The universal cosmic process was not created by any god or man.”
-- Heraclitus, 6th century BCE Greek philosopher
“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.”
-- George Bernard Shaw, early 20th century playwright
“When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.”
-- Thomas Paine
“Because morality is a social necessity, the moment faith in god is banished, man’s gaze turns from god to man and he becomes socially conscious. Religious belief prevented the growth of a sense of realism. But atheism at once makes man realistic and alive to the needs of morality.”
-- Gora (Goparaju Ramachandra Rao), 20th century Indian revolutionary and Atheist activist
“Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.”
-- Madalyn Murray O’Hair, 20th century American Atheist activist
“An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.”
-- Madalyn Murray O’Hair
“Je n’ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse.” (“I have no need of that hypothesis.”) -- Pierre-Simon Laplace, late 18th and early 19th century French mathematician and scientist (in reply to Napoleon’s statement that, “You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.”)
Positive Quotes
“Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”
-- Carl Sagan
“A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.”
-- Bertrand Russell
“There is no god more divine than yourself.”
-- Walt Whitman, 19th century American poet and humorist
“The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.”
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“An Atheist loves himself and his fellowman instead of a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for which we should work now—here on earth—for all men together to enjoy.”
-- Madalyn Murray O’Hair
“I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”
-- Thomas Paine
“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
-- Thomas Paine
“Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.”
-- Isaac Asimov
“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it, too?”
-- Douglas Adams, 20th century science fiction author
“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it’s just wonderful. And… the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.”
-- Douglas Adams
“Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.”
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
“It took me years, but letting go of religion has been the most profound wake up of my life. I feel I now look at the world not as a child, but as an adult. I see what’s bad and it’s really bad. But I also see what is beautiful, what is wonderful. And I feel so deeply appreciative that I am alive. How dare the religious use the term ‘born again.’ That truly describes freethinkers who’ve thrown off the shackles of religion so much better!”
-- Julia Sweeney, American actress and comedienne
“I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people.”
-- Katharine Hepburn, 20th century actress
Quotes from Icons of the American Revolution
“If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists.”
-- George Washington, American revolutionary and first President of the United States
“We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition … In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.”
-- George Washington
“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.”
-- Benjamin Franklin, American revolutionary, statesman and inventor
“He [Rev. Whitefield] used, indeed, sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard.”
-- Benjamin Franklin
“It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.”
-- Thomas Paine
“As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.”
-- Thomas Paine
“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
-- Thomas Paine
“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved—the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”
-- John Adams, American revolutionary and second President of the United States
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.”
-- John Adams
“As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] … it is declared … that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries… The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.”
-- Treaty of Tripoli (1797), carried unanimously by the Senate, signed by President John Adams
“… I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
-- Thomas Jefferson, American revolutionary, author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States
“Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.”
-- James Madison, American revolutionary, author of the Federalist Papers and fourth President of the United States
“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”
-- James Madison
Quotes from Later American Political Icons
“Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right to religious freedom… The tendency of the spirit of the age is strong toward religious liberty.”
-- John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams and sixth President of the United States
“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
-- Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States
“I was born a heretic. I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.”
-- Susan B. Anthony, 19th century American activist against slavery and for women’s rights
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
-- Susan B. Anthony
“Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.”
-- Ulysses S. Grant, eighteenth President of the United States
“To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against that liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth President of the United States
“I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be nonsectarian and no public moneys appropriated for sectarian schools.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt
“I do not believe in the divinity of Christ and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.”
-- William H. Taft, twenty-seventh President of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice (1921 to 1930)
“The lessons of religious toleration—a toleration which recognizes complete liberty of human thought, liberty of conscience—is one which, by precept and example, must be inculcated in the hearts and minds of all Americans if the institutions of our democracy are to be maintained and perpetuated.”
-- Franklin Roosevelt, thirty-second President of the United States
“I do not want church groups controlling the schools of our country. They must remain free.”
-- Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States and wife of Franklin Roosevelt
“The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.”
-- Hugo Black, U.S. Supreme Court justice (1937 to 1971), for the majority in Everson v. Board of Education, 1947
“The mixing of government and religion can be a threat to free government, even if no one is forced to participate… When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion, it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”
-- Harry Blackmun, U.S. Supreme Court justice (1970 to 1994), for the majority in Lee v. Weisman, 1992
Humorous/Witty Quotes
“Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these 10 things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time… but he loves you! … He loves you, and he needs money. He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise… somehow just can’t handle money!”
-- George Carlin, American comedian and author
“Faith; n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
…
Pray; v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
…
Scriptures; n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.”
-- Ambrose Bierce, 19th century author and satirist
“I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.”
-- Mark Twain, 19th century author, humorist, and satirist
“It’s rather like a puddle waking up one morning – I know they don’t normally do this, but allow me, I’m a science fiction writer – A puddle wakes up one morning and thinks: ‘This is a very interesting world I find myself in. It fits me very neatly. In fact it fits me so neatly... I mean really precise isn’t it?... It must have been made to have me in it.’ And the sun rises, and it’s continuing to narrate this story about how this hole must have been made to have him in it. And as the sun rises, and gradually the puddle is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking – and by the time the puddle ceases to exist, it’s still thinking – it’s still trapped in this idea that – that the hole was there for it. And if we think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it in the way that we have been destroying it, because we think that we can do no harm.”
-- Douglas Adams
“If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate.”
-- Carl Sagan
“When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?’ “
-- Quentin Crisp, 20th century English writer, actor and homosexual rights activist
“I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.”
-- Clarence Darrow, Agnostic and American lawyer in the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial”
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
-- Isaac Asimov
“A delusion held by one person is a mental illness, held by a few is a cult, held by many is a religion.”
-- Robert Todd Carroll, American author
“Eternal damnation awaits anyone who questions God’s unconditional love.”
-- Bill Hicks, late 20th century American comedian
“I’ve begun worshipping the Sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the Sun. It’s there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to dress up, and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate.”
-- George Carlin
