Atheism Morality Quotes

#1. To act morally is not to act out of fear of punishment; it is not to act as one is commanded to act. Rather, it is to act as one ought to act. And how one ought to act is not dependent upon anyone's power, even if the power be Divine.

Steven M. Cahn

#2. Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

H.L. Mencken

#3. Because morality is a social necessity, the moment faith in god is banished, man's gaze turns from god to man and he becomes socially conscious. Religious belief prevented the growth of a sense of realism. But atheism at once makes man realistic and alive to the needs of morality.

Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

#4. You couldn't say 'I had orders.' You couldn't say 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. [ ... ] Not 'Thou Shalt Not'. Say 'I Will Not'.

Terry Pratchett

#5. If you can't trust the Bible's history, how can you trust its morality?

Ken Ham

#6. We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.

Christopher Hitchens

#7. Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity.

Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

#8. There is in the clergy of all Christian denominations a time-serving, cringing, subservient morality, as wide from the spirit of the gospel as it is from the intrepid assertion and vindication of truth.

John Quincy Adams

#9. One may sigh for all that one loses in giving up the old religion ... but the new irreligion is the manlier, honester and simpler thing, and affords a better throry of life and a more solid basis for morality.

Charles Eliot Norton

#10. Morality, as far as I could see, originates in atheism and the realization that no higher power is coming along to feed the hungry or lift the fallen. Mercy is left entirely to us.

Barbara Ehrenreich

#11. I do not judge the individual based on their belief. If I were to, then I would, undoubtedly, be no better than the (religious) system that I frown upon.

Travis Culliton

#12. Nothing in any religious teachings goes beyond Humanism, unless you add the supernatural...Make believe is the only difference between being human and being religious.

Travis Culliton

#13. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Theodore Parker

#14. Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another.

Benjamin Franklin

#15. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.

Albert Einstein

#16. I am an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people.

Katharine Hepburn

#17. The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.

Garrett Hardin

#18. ...atheism leaves no room for excuses...

Travis Culliton

#19. There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality.

Jeremy Bentham

#20. I am not advocating a morality based on evolution.

Richard Dawkins

#21. To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.

T. S. Eliot

#22. If nihilism is the inability to believe, then its most serious symptom is not found in atheism, but in the inability to believe in what is, to see what is happening, and to live life as it is offered. This infirmity is at the root of all idealism. Morality has no faith in the world.

Albert Camus

#23. Us atheist people, we believe we have to act properly and honestly for a moral principle and not because we expect an award in Paradise.

Margherita Hack

#24. Saying that you are moral because you believe in a god is like saying you are an economist because you play monopoly.

Robert W. Cox

#25. The orthodox tend to think that people who, like the postmodernists and me, believe neither in God nor in some suitable substitute, must feel that everything is permitted, that everybody can do what they like.

Richard M. Rorty

#26. As hatred is defined as intense dislike, what is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion, if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?

Rowan Atkinson

#27. The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.

Fulton J. Sheen

#28. One must devote oneself to figuring out that one must live for the good, for its own sake. It was a secular morality. Contemporaries did not know what to call a thing like that - he questioned their every faith, their every way of life - so they called it atheism.

Jennifer Michael Hecht

#29. God gives out good gifts of wisdom, talent, beauty, and skill 'graciously'
that is, in a completely unmerited way. He casts them across all humanity, regardless of religious conviction, race, gender, or any other attribute to enrich, brighten, and preserve the world.

Timothy Keller

#30. We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.

Christopher Hitchens

#31. Men neglect the duties incumbent on man, yet are treated like demi-gods; religion is also separated from morality by a ceremonial veil, yet men wonder that the world is almost, literally speaking, a den of sharpers or oppressors.

Mary Wollstonecraft

#32. Morality does not depend on religion.

John Ruskin

#33. I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.

Kurt Vonnegut