Atheism Quotes - Page 60

One must keep one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been following and revising and revising for 72 years I remember one detail. All my life I have been honest - comparatively honest. I could never use money I had not made honestly - I could only lend it.

Of the 417 commandments, only a single one of the 417 has found ministerial obedience; multiply and replenish the earth. To it sinner & saint, scholar & ignoramus, Christian & savage are alike loyal.

You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.

If souls continue to exist, how does the air contain them from eternity?

God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist.

It is not a mistake to commit a mistake, for no one commits a mistake knowing it to be one. But it is a mistake not to correct the mistake after knowing it to be one. If you are afraid of committing a mistake, you are afraid of doing anything at all. You will correct your mistakes whenever you find them.

The agnostic is gutless and prefers to keep one safe foot in the god camp.

Of course it must, and our scientific men must be criticized boldly. They will not feel comfortable when you and I are through with them.

I am an infidel. I know what an infidel is, and that's what I am.

I am an atheist, thanks be to God.

Epicurus ... whose genius surpassed all humankind, extinguished the light of others, as the stars are dimmed by the rising sun.

True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

The politer the society, the greater the lies it requires.

And the cause of everything is that which we call God.

How unfortunate for mankind that the Lord is reported by Holy Writ as having said 'Vengeance is mine!'

Real life is about accepting ups and downs, the good and the bad, the possibility of failure as well as the ambition to succeed. Atheism speaks to the truth about our human nature because it recognizes all this and does not seek to shield us from the truth by myth and superstition

As I conceive this doctrine to be a gross misrepresentation of the character and moral government of God, and to affect many other articles in the scheme of Christianity, greatly disfiguring and depraving it; I shall show, ... that it has no countenance whatever in reason, or the Scriptures; and, therefore, that the whole doctrine of atonement, with every modification of it, has been a departure from the primitive and genuine doctrine of Christianity.

Those who accept freedom of religion as a right are obligated by this acceptance to take the maintenance of freedom of religion as a duty.

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 graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference.

I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious liberty ... Neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test - even by indirection.

If my church attempted to influence me in a way which was improper or which affected adversely my responsibilities as a public servant sworn to uphold the Constitution, then I would reply to them that this was an improper action on their part. It was one to which I could not subscribe.

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.

Criticism of the commitment of religion to the supernatural is thus positive in import.

A purpose derived from a false premise - that a deity has ordained submission to his will - cannot merit respect. The pursuit of Enlightenment-era goals - solving our world's problems through rational discourse, rather than through religion and tradition - provides ample grounds for a purposive existence. It is not for nothing that the Enlightenment, when atheism truly began to take hold, was also known as the Age of Reason.