Famous Quotes & Sayings

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-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.

Jean Rostand

The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.

Giovanni Papini

Humans: become atheists each and all! God will nevertheless welcome you with all his heart!

Ian Mckellen

I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about - nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund-raiser) because I don't want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern - legal and social equality for gay people worldwide.

Iain Banks

I just took [my cancer diagnosis] as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought "ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this?" and I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it.

Hugh Miller

The footprint of the savage traced in the sand is sufficient to attest the presence of man to the atheist who will not recognize God, whose hand is impressed upon the entire universe.

Homer

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

Frederick Buechner

Many an atheist is a believer without knowing it juast as many a believer is an atheist without knowing it. You can sincerely believe there is no God and live as though there is. You can sincerely believe there is a God and live as though there isn't.

Frederick Buechner

Unbelief is as much of a choice as belief is. What makes it in many ways more appealing is that whereas to believe in something requires some measure of understanding and effort, not to believe doesn't require much of anything at all.

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.

Thanks to God, I am still an atheist

Ernst Mayr

I have the honesty to say I'm an Atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God.

Ernestine Rose

It is an interesting and demonstrable fact that all children are atheists and were not religion inculcated in their minds, they would remain so.

Ernestine Rose

Whatever good you would do out of fear of punishment, or hope of reward hereafter, the Atheist would do simply because it is good; and being so, he would receive the far surer and more certain reward, springing from well-doing, which would constitute his pleasure, and promote his happiness.

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.

Chris Patten

It is curious that atheists have proved to be so intolerant of those who have a faith.

Chris O'Dowd

I guess I'm an atheist. But I would say I have very good relationships with the priests that I grew up with. I was an altar boy growing up, and the men of God in my life have always been really lovely, intelligent, well-informed, kind men. So I feel very loyal to their beliefs as much as anything else.

Lynn Coady

I'm no atheist - I'm lazy. I really do like hassle-free Sunday mornings. I have a problem with organized religion, so I've simply opted out. Live and let live, I figure.

Plutarch

The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them.

Nathaniel Branden

Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion.

Joseph McCabe

The making of an Atheist implies a mental stimulation and training which brings into play the primary factors of social progress.

Johannes Kepler

Once miracles are admitted, every scientific explanation is out of the question.

John Adams

I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations ... They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.

John Adams

The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.

John Adams

The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.