My favorite quotes...

[R13]

secular, atheist, agnostic or just irreligious quotes that I've always liked and seemed to explain my views better than any way I could ever imagine putting it and some I just find great. Some sourced and some not.

Since no one really knows anything about God,
those who think they do are just
troublemakers.


"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D." "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.


There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said "Let us pray," and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible. ~Desmond M. Tutu,

If 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.


The day I recognized that I was perfectly comfortable suffering punishment from a diety whom I had no respect for, and whom his followers are not worthy of respect either, was the day everything became clear. If there really is a god, and he punishes people for questioning the value of hypocritical charlatans, then I want no part of his world. And I will gladly hold my head up high and march with full conviction into the christian hell and never regret it. The fact that all this crap is an illusion is mere icing on the cake.


All religions have been made by men." - Napoleon Bonaparte

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet?

?Napoleon Bonaparte

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei

I would never want to be the member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood." - George Carlin

History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it." - Robert Heinlein.


If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.-- Baron d'Holbach


Surely the ass who invented the first religion ought to be the first ass damned. - Mark Twain

All thinking men are atheists. - Ernest Hemmingway

The hands that help are far better than lips that pray. - Robert Green Ingersoll

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." - John Adams

Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night." - Isaac Asimov

So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake. Religion is all bunk." - Thomas Edison

The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites." - Thomas Jefferson

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

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced?" - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." - Voltaire

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God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it.

Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
--Thomas Jefferson

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

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

- Epicurus

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
- Robert Frost

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I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
-Bertrand Russell


Maybe you've put your faith in spiritual claptrap because our random, narrative-free universe terrifies you. But that's no solution. If you want comforting, suck your thumb. Buy a pillow. Don't make up a load of floaty blah about energy or destiny. This is the real world, stupid. We should be solving problems, not sticking our fingers in our ears and singing about fairies.
-Charlie Brooker


Our father which art in Heaven,
Stay there,
And we shall stay on Earth
which is sometimes so pretty.
-Jacques Prevert

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy, in the minds of men.
-Sir Francis Bacon


The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
- Albert Einstein


It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. ... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
-Einstein, Albert

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
-Albert Einstein


If we don't play God, who will?
-James D. Watson

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
-Steven Weinberg

I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion.
-James Buchanan

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