Atheist Quotes

With or without religion, 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.

How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

How much more of the mosque, of prayer and fasting? Better go drunk and begging round the taverns. Khayyam, drink wine, for soon this clay of yours Will make a cup, bowl, one day a jar. When once you hear the roses are in bloom, Then is the time, my love, to pour the wine; Houris and palaces and Heaven and Hell- These are but fairy-tales, forget them all.

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism - no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think what a waste of energy. If people want to believe in this god, or that god, that's fine by me, believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

If you are a Christian, you are in danger. If you decided to abandon your faith and become an atheist, you also are to be liquidated according to their concept. You are in danger if you decide to become a Muslim. It is not going to save you anyway because they believe traditional Islam is hostile to their goals.

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

It is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization. There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

I have not tolerated an atheist in the ranks of the SS. Every member has a deep faith in God, in what my ancestors called in their language Waralda, the ancient one, the one who is mightier than we are.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.

Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist.

The Atheist complains about the wind. The Christian prays for it to change. The Satanist adjusts his sails.

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

I don't know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, 'Why don't you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?' And I always say, well, when you say that, you've also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that's got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

The reason people use a crucifix against vampires is because vampires are allergic to bullshit.

Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?