Quotes for the Atheists
Submitted by pianoshootis on Tue, 01/31/2006 - 09:08
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- "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, accept it and live up to it." -- Buddha
- "Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities." -- Sigmund Freud
- "Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." -- Sigmund Freud
- "The Church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon. And I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church." -- Magellan
- "I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion." -- James Buchanan
- "I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose." -- Clarence Darrow
- "I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God." -- Thomas Edison
- "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." -- Albert Einstein
- "The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell
- "It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." -- Richard Dawkins
- "The foolish reject what they see and not what they think; the wise reject what they think and not what they see." -- Huang Po
- “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” -- Stephen F. Roberts
- "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- GB Shaw
- "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." -- Mark Twain
- "Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate." -- Penn Jillette
- "The first step towards philosophy is incredulity." -- Denis Diderot
- "Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it." -- Thomas Paine
- "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
- "To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition." -- Woody Allen
- "God is, to me, pretty much a myth created over time to deny the idea that we're all responsible for our own actions." -- Seth Green
- "Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told." -- George Carlin
- "How on earth can religious people believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash? The acceptance of a creed, any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a way to fight loneliness. Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore." -- KVJr.
- "I know why I will become bitter. I will finally realize that I have had it right all along: that I will not see God, that there is no heaven or Judgement Day." -- KVJr.
- "If I were asked for a one-sentence soundbite on religion, I would say I was against it." -- Salman Rushdie
- "Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever." -- Gore Vidal
- "Being an atheist makes someone a clearer thinking, fairer person. They [atheists] are not doing things to be rewarded in heaven; they're doing things because they're right, because they live by a moral code." -- Ricky Gervais
- "Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch." -- Larry Flynt
- "If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion." -- Edmond de Goncourt
- "How can one argue vigorously against an absurdly childish notion without betraying that one actually takes the issue seriously? Had Galileo not recanted, he might then have proved himself a sort of religious fanatic after all." -- Matt Berry
- "The position of the atheist is a clear and reasonable one. I know nothing about God and therefore I do not believe in Him or it. What you tell me about your God is self-contradictory and is therefore incredible. I do not deny "God," which is an unknown tongue to me. I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God." -- Annie Wood Besant
- "Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partiy with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy." -- Emma Goldman
- "No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter ... than you and I; and all religion ... is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry." -- Edgar Allan Poe
- "No religious organizations shall receive any privileges from the state nor exercise any political authority. No person shall be compelled to take part in any religious act, celebration, rite or practice. The state and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity." -- Japan
- "I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental agnostics affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case." -- Christopher Hitchens
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Fabulous list. What an impressive collection of quotations. I particularly like the one by Seth Green.
Before looking for these quotes I didn't even know Seth was an unbeliever. I only know from hearing him speak he sounds smart and lucid, and those people invariably turn out to be atheists.
Drats! And here I always aim at smart and lucid.
Ah, well... :)
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
...and I thank the gods whenever I'm smart and lucid.
I can't give away these fatted calves.
You must spend much time offering thanksgivings.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
"Scriptures, noun. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based." - Ambrose Bierce (from The Devil's Dictionary)
I wrote in to Straight Dope years ago to ask what the difference between a church and a cult was. They told me, "A church is the religious organization I belong to. A cult is the wacko outfit you belong to."
"What is your religion, my son?" inquired the Archbishop of Rheims.
"Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant; "I am ashamed of it."
"Then why do you not become an atheist?"
"Impossible! I should be ashamed of atheism."
"In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants."
Leave it to Mr. Bierce to demonstrate the difference between a "Monseigneur" and a "Monsieur."
"Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends." by Woody Allen
Magellan quote is bogus
The quote is a fabrication of Robert Green Ingersoll. It is found in his essay "Individuality." This may be accessed at http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individualit...
It's in the fourth paragraph of his essay:
It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, -- some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, "The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church." On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.
This was first pointed out, as far as I know, by Dr. Tom Gorski in his website "Knowing What Ain't So" at http://www.churchoffreethought.org/cgi-bin/contray/contray.cgi?DATA=&ID=... . Dr. Gorski is one of four founders of the The North Texas Church of Freethought.
There are probably over a hundred sites on the Web with this bogus quote. I hope we all begin to exercise some form of self-correction and cite the real author of those words, Ingersoll.
Vicente Calibo de Jesus ginesdemafra@gmail.com
Others rectified the Magellan quote while others insist on keeping Magellan's authorship, despite...
To the credit of Wikiquote it clearly points out the quote is disputed and now cite Ingersoll as author. I have clarified the issue. Pls click http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Ferdinand_Magellan
At http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Religion/Atheist%20Quote... it immediately corrected the attribution: "The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church."
..........Robert Green Ingersoll (not Ferdinand Magellan)
At http://www.iidb.org/vbb/archive/index.php/t-63650.html they already were able to determine that it was Ingersoll who in fact said the words he attributes to Magellan. “Regarding a flat earth, please note that Ingersoll used a quote attributed to Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), the Portuguese and Spanish explorer: ‘The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.’ Ingersoll uses this quote to make a point: ‘The trouble with most people is, they bow to what is called authority.’ Ingersoll's thrust in this article is that ‘It is the duty of each and every one to maintain his individuality’ and ‘There can be nothing more utterly subversive of all that is really valuable than the suppression of honest thought--No man, worthy of the form he bears, will at the command of church or state solemnly repeat a creed his reason scorns.’ I agree with Ingersoll. If you do not, that is certainly your privilege.” The author assumes Ingersoll got it from an authentic source. But I have read all primary sources on Magellan—eyewitness accounts by Antonio Pigafetta, Gines de Mafra, Francisco Albo, The Genoese Pilot, Martinho de Aiamonte, Sebastian Elcano—nowhere is there such a statement from Magellan. Ingersoll most definitely cites no authority.
Vicente Calibo de Jesus
ginesdemafra@gmail.com