Top 100 Quotes About Atheism
#1. Euripides long ago said, 'who dares not speak his free thought is a slave.' I nominated myself as an 'infidel' as a challenge to thought for those who are asleep.
Luther Burbank
#2. Do you think in many ways, sir, you're the victim of circumstance now?
Peter Jennings
#3. The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.
John Adams
#4. One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it.
Gustave Le Bon
#5. I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.
James Joyce
#6. Let us inquire what glory there was in an omnipotent being torturing forever a puny little creature who could in no way defend himself? Would it be to the glory of a man to fry ants?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
#7. Nothing enlarges the gulf of atheism more than the wide passage that lies between the faith and lives of men pretending to teach Christianity.
Benjamin Stillingfleet
#8. What Marxism calls atheism is basically the negation of an idol, which sometimes bears the name of God.
Ernesto Cardenal
#9. Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: 'Don't be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones. People might suppose this was in poor taste.
Christopher Hitchens
#10. I am nothing and should be everything.
Karl Marx
#11. Atheism has become a major threat to the church. New Atheists tend to be articulate and belligerent. They are aggressively engaging in "atheist evangelism," determined to stamp out every vestige of belief in God, which they insist is not only "stupid" but "wicked."
Dave Hunt
#12. Atheism robs death of meaning. And if death has no meaning, how can life ultimately have meaning? For death is the end of life. Here
Peter Kreeft
#14. Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#16. A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
Manly P. Hall
#17. The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed.
Bartolome De Las Casas
#18. The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.
Thomas Paine
#19. We know that there is no absolute knowledge, that there are only theories; but we forget this. The better educated we are, the harder we believe in axioms.
Lincoln Steffens
#20. Dogmas of every kind put assertion in the place of reason and give rise to more contention, bitterness, and want of charity than any other influence in human affairs.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#21. There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.
Bertrand Russell
#22. I oscillate between agnosticism and atheism.
Brad Pitt
#23. Government is contemptuous of true religion when it confiscates the taxes of Caesar to finance the things of God.
Sam Ervin
#25. Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason, that if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#26. If there's a god, it knows exactly what it would take to convince me and has refused to provide it. In fact, it has gone to great lengths to hide any evidence of its existence. That doesn't seem like a deity that wants to be worshiped to me.
David G. McAfee
#27. Oh, that [his Thanksgiving Message] is some of Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools.
Abraham Lincoln
#28. A storm is coming; our storm. Emperor - we come for you!
Frank Herbert
#29. Me, when it comes to religion, I have no God. When I'm cool, I don't need anyone, and when I'm feeling shitty and this big empty hole opens up inside me, I just know there's never been a god that could fill it and there never will be.
Etgar Keret
#30. An atheist is a man who does not believe the existence of a God; now, no one can be certain of the existence of a being whom he does not conceive, and who is said to unite incompatible qualities.
Paul Henri Thiry D'Holbach
#31. Within thy Grave! Oh no, but on some other flight - Thou only camest to mankind To rend it with Good night
Emily Dickinson
#32. Not only had I got rid of the theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution.
Andrew Carnegie
#33. Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.
Christopher Hitchens
#34. Atheism, nine times out of ten, is born from the womb of a bad conscience. Disbelief is born of sin, not of reason.
Fulton J. Sheen
#35. Old godheads sink in space and drown Their arks like foundered galleons sucked down.
Don Marquis
#36. Prayer never changes the laws of nature.
Dan Barker
#37. Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn't have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.
Andy Rooney
#38. On the church vaulting above was the clock-face of eternity, void of number and serving as its own hand, only one black finger was pointing and the dead wanted to tell the time by it.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
#39. Stripping away the irrational, the illogical, and the impossible, I am left with atheism. I can live with that.
Mark Twain
#40. The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike ... Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.
C.S. Lewis
#41. Once you have awakened to the question of faith, you cannot simply return to your everyday agenda like a committed atheist could. You cannot retreat to the comforts of atheism.
Martin Walser
#42. The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.
Thomas Paine
#43. Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.
Isaac Newton
#44. Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive
Simone Weil
#45. I am an atheist and I consider religions to be a form of collective neurosis. I am not an enemy of the Catholics, as I am not an enemy of the tuberculars, the myopic or the paralytics; you cannot be an enemy of the sick, only their good friend in order to help them cure themselves.
Diego Rivera
#46. When I die I won't go to heaven or hell; there will just be nothingness.
Isaac Asimov
#47. A religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism.
Dion Fortune
#48. If you're going to get into big time religion, these are the games you have to play. You go into it as a business and you work it as a business.
Marjoe Gortner
#50. All Chaos was once yer kingdom; verily, held ye dominion over the entire Pentaverse, but today ye was sore afraid in dark coners, nooks, and sink holes.
Robert Anton Wilson
#51. I give money for church organs in the hope the organ music will distract the congregation's attention from the rest of the service.
Andrew Carnegie
#52. In this climate - with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace - making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.
Wendy Kaminer
#53. I do not know the needs of a god or of another world ... I do know that women make shirts for seventy cents a dozen in this one.
Helen H. Gardener
#54. What makes our opponents useful is that they allow us to believe that without them we would be able to realize our goals.
Jean Rostand
#55. Theologians are all alike, of whatever religion or country they may be; their aim is always to wield despotic authority over men's consciences; they therefore persecute all of us who have the temerity to tell the truth.
Frederick The Great
#56. Well, I myself am a 100% atheist. And I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which dominates our entire life, is assuming a more and more religious character.
Uri Avnery
#57. [Josiah P. Mendum memorial at Paine Hall]
[He turned] the strait-laced Boston of sixty years ago [into] the enlightened Hub of today, ... to 'destroy bigotry and uproot the evils of superstition.
Josiah P. Mendum
#58. I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.
Isaac Asimov
#59. No compelling data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism.
Stephen Jay Gould
#60. The difference between God an I is that everyday, I too deal with people who don't love but I have no desire to kill them or wish them to suffer for all of eternity for it
Anonymous
#61. The concepts of truth may differ. But all admit and respect truth. That truth I call God. For sometime I was saying, "God is Truth," but that did not satisfy me. So now I say, "Truth is God."
Mahatma Gandhi
#62. Knew I how to pray, to intercede for your [broken] Foot were intuitive - but I am but a Pagan.
Emily Dickinson
#63. Nothing draws people more quickly away from religion than an open mind.
Hemant Mehta
#64. Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
Douglas Adams
#65. The only differences between a cult and a religion are the numbers of adherents and the degree to which they are marginalized by the rest of society.
Sam Harris
#66. The orthodox faith painted God as a revengeful being, and yet people talk about loving such a being.
P.T. Barnum
#67. A lie is a lie
even if everyone believes it.
Anonymous
#68. Radical Muslims fly planes into buildings. Radical Christians kill abortion doctors. Radical Atheists write books.
Hemant Mehta
#69. When a politician spends a million on himself, we rally and call him a thief. But when a cardinal spends the same amount on his attire, we kneel down and kiss his hand.
Justin Villanueva
#70. Atheism is a belief system",
is like saying "not going skiing, is a hobby.
Ricky Gervais
#71. I'd rather live a life I truly love by spending my time doing things I love and have that be my only life rather than devote myself to someone who can't be proven exists at all that wants our time and our love more than our virtues simply just so I can live again
Anonymous
#72. What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 flight to Oslo?
Douglas Adams
#73. It is as clear as the sun and as evident as the day that there is no God and that there can be none.
Ludwig Feuerbach
#74. You know, it's a sad and unfortunate state of affairs that you have to live in a world where eight-year-olds refuse to believe in anything that they cannot touch or measure, and anyone who happens to see a thing that is invisible to most people is immediately branded a lunatic.
Caitlin R. Kiernan
#75. The essence of Christianity, as I see it, is love. The essence of Humanism (and I'm also a Humanist) is love. At that level, we're not far apart.
Mark Thomas
#76. Of such divine neglect was atheism made; belief could not be rekindled now, however profound his terror. Thoughts
Clive Barker
#77. The bourgeoisie, when it was struggling against the nobility sustained by the clergy, hoisted the flag of free thought and atheism; but once triumphant, it changed its tone and manner and today it uses religion to support its economic and political supremacy
Paul Lafargue
#78. Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing.
Thomas Hobbes
#79. Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.
Joseph Conrad
#81. To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler. Hitler tried to speed up evolution, to help it along, and millions suffered and died in unspeakable ways because of it.
D. James Kennedy
#83. This is the only real revelation - that God is only a trick with mirrors, our dark reflection in a glass.
Philip Appleman
#84. I suppose the spiritual trance is harder to break than the religious one because the delusion is more difficult to distinguish. You have a quasi-cloud of ideas that include wonderful concepts of openness and altruism without the blatant anthropomorphism of religion.
Christopher Zzenn Loren
#85. [priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.
David Hume
#86. So great was the preference given to sacred over profane learning that Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer.
John William Draper
#87. There are good reasons to believe in God, including the existence of mathematical principles and order in creation. They are positive reasons, based on knowledge, rather than default assumptions based on a temporary lack of knowledge.
Francis Collins
#88. Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
#89. The chimps love holidays - in fact Tatu actually anticipates them and asks about them.
Roger Fouts
#90. I don't think you can just choose to believe in God. You either do or you don't, and no matter what camp you're in, it would take something life-changing to truly lead you into the other one.
Paula Stokes
#91. I waver between a cop-out agnostic and principled atheism
Dan Savage
#92. I am an atheist, a rationalist and a humanist.
Pierre Berton
#93. I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.
C. G. Jung
#94. A celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, had contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin.
William Godwin
#95. Religion cannot and should not be replaced by atheism. Religion needs to go away and not be replaced by anything. Atheism is not a religion. It's the absence of religion, and that's a wonderful thing.
Penn Jillette
#96. The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous.
Thomas Paine
#97. It is almost a cliche to speak of the professed atheist who cries out for help to God when he is in mortal danger. The profession of atheism is done by the conscious mind, but the subconscious still believes in God.
Serge Kahili King
#98. There's a bait and switch going on here because the critics want the textbooks to question whether evolution occurred. And of course they don't because scientists don't question whether evolution occurred.
Eugenie Scott
#100. Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
Alan W. Watts
