Atheism Quotes

If the ancient churches, in debating and deciding the greatest mysteries of religion, knew nothing of these two texts, I understand not why we should be so fond of them now the debate is over.

Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan - spoiled.

But I still don't know what kind of monster was this god, until I saw that Jesus deliberately hid his light under a bushel. "Tell no one" was often his command.

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

Progress is a comfortable disease.

Atheistic morality is not impossible, but it will never answer our purpose.

And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a Jew like me. And so was his father.

He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?

Today, the religion clauses of the First Amendment do not need to be fixed; they need to be followed.

What makes our opponents useful is that they allow us to believe that without them we would be able to realize our goals.

Civilization is not a burden. It is an opportunity.

I enjoy being at a meeting that doesn't start with an invocation!

For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.

Skepticism is my nature, freethought is my methodology, agnosticism is my conclusion after 25 years of being in the ministry, and atheism is my opinion.

Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.

The greatest act of faith takes place when a man finally decides that he is not God.

When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.

There is a court to which I shall appeal: the court of public opinion.

One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature - a sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man.

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.

It is almost impossible to convince people who are under the influence of ideological bigotry that whose whom they regard as belonging to the enemy species are human.

It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions.

We cannot prove that there is no God, but we can safely conclude the He is very, very improbable indeed.

I lay down the Position, That whatever a Conscience well directed allows us to do for the Advancement of Truth, an erroneous Conscience will warrant for advancing a suppos'd Truth.

Atheism. There is not a single exalting and emancipating influence that does not in turn become inhibitory.

One must be stark mad, to believe that mankind can subsist without magistrates.

In our country we ask no toleration for religion and its free exercise, but we claim it as an inalienable right.

No evidence or proof of the existence of a God has been found in the phenomena of nature, based on experience.

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

Who knows most, doubts most.

Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so; It is not so. It is so; it is not so.

Thomson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.

Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but at last it was complete.

I think you never forget your childhood, whether it was happy or unhappy.

The habit of arguing in support of atheism, whether it be done from conviction or in pretense, is a wicked and impious practice.

Whenever the clergy were at the elbow of the civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant, persecution was the result.

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.

Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.

Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats, well here I am.

Unbelief is the greatest of sins.

Is it not gain to have diminished the faith that it was the duty of the wretched and the miserable to be content with the lot in life which providence had awarded them?

Atheists in our midst are proof that all consciences can be accommodated here, even those that have no ground for holding that conscience is sacred, inalienable, and prior to civil society.

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.

If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.' To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him.

Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same.

I grow daily to honor facts more and more, and theory less and less.

I believe in the Constitution. The Constitution says that government isn't supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.

I brought this case because I am an atheist and this offends me, and I have the right to bring up my daughter without God being imposed into her life by her schoolteachers.