Atheism Quotes - Page 42

To claim "humanitarian motives" when the motive is envy and its supposed appeasement, is a favorite rhetorical device of politicians today, and has been for at least a hundred and fifty years.

No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve.

I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.

I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality.

The scent of frying astronomers long ago ceased to ascend to Yahweh.

Why do men go to zoos?

Christianity is such a silly religion.

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

I pray you, magnificent Sir, do not trouble yourself to return to us, but await our coming to you.

Shouldn't atheist have an equal obligation to explain pleasure in a world of randomness. Where does pleasure come from?

The sooner the doctrine of original sin disappears, the better it is for theology.

Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of Rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations, to prevent it in others.

Thy Banners gleam a little, and are furled; Against thy turrets surge His phantom tow'rs; Drugged with his Opiates the nations nod, Refusing still the beauty of thine hours; And fragile is thy tenure of this world Still haunted by the monstrous ghost of God.

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.

War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.

One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

Praying is begging for an unseen deity to alter the laws of nature for someone admittedly unworthy.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

Where there is no religion, hypocrisy becomes good taste.

One is not converted to christianity; one must be morbid enough for it.

I have not come to know atheism as a result of logical reasoning and still less as an event in my life: in me it is a matter of instinct.

There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value. This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.

Faith means the will to avoid knowing what is true.

Whatever you have to do to have a good time, let's get on with it, so long as it doesn't cause a murder.