Famous Quotes & Sayings

H. L. Mencken

Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.

H. L. Mencken

When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.

H. P. Lovecraft

All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.

George Herbert

The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition.

Gary Kemp

I'm an atheist. I don't 'believe' at all.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Historical refutation as the definitive refutation.- In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God - today one indicates how the belief that there is a God arose and how this belief acquired its weight and importance: a counter-proof that there is no God thereby becomes superfluous.- When in former times one had refuted the 'proofs of the existence of God' put forward, there always remained the doubt whether better proofs might not be adduced than those just refuted: in those days atheists did not know how to make a clean sweep.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The man of the future who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and anti-nihilist; this victor over God and nothingness - he must come one day.

Friedrich Nietzsche

If there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god? Therefore there are no gods.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.

Hu Shih

Practically all the prominent leaders of thought in China today are openly agnostics and even atheists.

The atheist worldview of life is a materialistic culture that frees humanity from superstition.

Howard Stern

I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock.

Howard Stern

I am circumcised, and I tell you something, I despise it. I despise it. I despise it... I am completely pissed off that I'm circumcised.

Honore de Balzac

A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage.

Honore de Balzac

A society of atheists would immediately invent a religion.

Francis Quarles

Make philosophy thy journey, theology thy journey's end: philosophy is a pleasant way, but dangerous to him that either tires or retires; in this journey it is safe neither to loiter nor to rest, till thou hast attained thy journey's end; he that sits down a philosopher rises up an atheist.

Ian Mcewan

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

Ian Mcewan

How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.

Homer

See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly.

Erica Jong

But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.

Erica Jong

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.

Hippocrates

Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.

Hillary Clinton

It saddens me that a historic event like this is being misconstrued by a small but vocal group of critics trying to spread the notion that the UN gathering is really the work of radicals and atheists bent on destroying our families.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter.

Jack Germond

I have been an atheist my entire adult life. I do not proselytize, however. Nor do I question the faith of others. I just don't want to be obliged to accept someone else's faith as a factor in my government.

Isaac Newton

I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily. Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors.

Michael Newdow

because I am an atheist and this offends me.

Hannah More

In agony or danger, no nature is atheist. The mind that knows not what to fly to, flies to God.

Greg Graffin

As I’ve said, I’ve never believed in God, which technically makes me an atheist (since the prefix “a” means “not” or “without”). But I have problems with the word “atheism.” It defines what someone is not rather than what someone is. It would be like calling me an a-instrumentalist for Bad Religion rather than the band’s singer. Defining yourself as against something says very little about what you are for.

Greg Graffin

I don't bill myself as an atheist but as a naturalist. Naturalism is a belief system. A lot of scientists bristle at that. We all have to believe we can find the truth. Evidence is my guide. I rely on observation, experimentation and verification.

J. D. Salinger

I said old Jesus probably would've puked if He could see it - all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would've liked would be the guy who plays the kettle drums in the orchestra.

John Fowles

Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation.