Atheism Quotes
This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said: "Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."
A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
Education teaches people how to think, while propaganda teaches people what to think.
I have long been convinced that the Christian Eucharist is but a continuation of the Eleusinian mysteries. St Paul, in using the word teleiois, almost confirms this.
Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehension or error.
It is important to bear in mind the now commonly accepted fact that in its primitive stages, religion had nothing to do with morals as understood by us today.
I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.
Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.
I have ever regarded the freedom of religious opinions and worship as equally belonging to every sect.
The settled opinion here is that religion is essentially distinct from Civil Govt. and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both.
The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of ... constitutional principles.
Are not the daily devotions conducted by these legal ecclesiastics already degenerating into a scanty attendance, and a tiresome formality?
It seems to me that the bane of our country is a profession of faith either with no basis of real belief, or with no proper examination of the grounds on which the creed is supposed to rest.
Christ preaches only servitude and dependence... True Christians are made to be slaves.
If we ever opened a meeting with a prayer, silent or otherwise, we would disintegrate.
"Agnostic" is a much more recent word than "atheist", coined by Thomas Huxley in 1869 to mean "without knowledge of God" and acquiring the usage of "being doubtful about the existence of God."
I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself.
I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits... Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration to offer them an asylum.
The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.
Non-proliferation will only work if all states are willing to cooperate, and that will only happen if all feel they are being treated fairly.
It has been petrified into a slavery of thought and sentiment, as intolerant superiority on the part of the few and an intolerable burden on the part of the many.
The scientific-religious conflict ultimately is a conflict between allegiance to this method and allegiance to even an irreducible minimum of belief so fixed in advance that it can never be modified.
I am not a spokesperson for the church and the church is not a spokesperson for the United States of America.
For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.
The liberty of conscience, which above all other things ought to be to all men dearest and most precious.
The star of the Magi which pointed so unerringly to the cradle of Christ points not less unerringly to one of the sources from which Christ came.
Surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of prayer.
The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion.
The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.
How is it that the Church produced no geometer in her autocratic reign of twelve hundred years?
So great was the preference given to sacred over profane learning that Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer.
In a liberal scientific society, to claim that you are above error is the height of irresponsibility.
Indeed, one modern President abjured God altogether, ending speeches with a chaste 'Thank you very much.' This was Jimmy Carter, the most genuinely devout President of the postwar period.
The priests used to say that faith can move mountains, and nobody believed them. Today the scientists say that they can level mountains, and nobody doubts them.
My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can't.
Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.
Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.
