Famous Quotes & Sayings

Bertrand Russell

I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.

Bertrand Russell

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

Bertrand Russell

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

Bertrand Russell

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

Bertrand Russell

Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

Even an atheist may be ready to concede that a good wine is the drink of gods.

Douglas Adams

American Atheists: What message would you like to send to your Atheist fans?Douglas Adams: Hello! How are you?

Geraldine Brooks

I'm a praying atheist. When I hear an ambulance siren, I ask for a blessing for those people in trouble, knowing that no one's listening. I think it's just a habit of mindfulness.

Herman Melville

What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?

Henry David Thoreau

I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.

H. L. Mencken

A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought.

H. L. Mencken

Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.

H. L. Mencken

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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.

Jerry Falwell

Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.

Ernest Hemingway

Religion is like an ice cold whiskey on a hot day.

Ernest Hemingway

In a power hungry, power worshipping society, men label themselves atheist.

Flannery O'Connor

I am a Catholic not like someone else would be a Baptist or a Methodist, but like someone else would be an atheist.

Henny Youngman

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge.

Gore Vidal

To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.

Gore Vidal

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.

Gore Vidal

I'm a born - again atheist.

Gore Vidal

Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.

Jacques Derrida

I rightly pass for an atheist.

James Freeman Clarke

The atheist has no hope.

Isaac Asimov

Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

Isaac Asimov

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

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it.

Isaac Asimov

I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.

Isaac Asimov

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

Isaac Asimov

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

Jean-Paul Sartre

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.