“Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.”
— Heywood Broun
“To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.”
— Joseph Addison
“Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man.”
— Francis Bacon
“The atheist has no hope.”
— J. F. Clarke
“Infidelity does not consist in believing or in disbelieving: it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.”
— Thomas Paine
“I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment, to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure… I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose.”
— Clarence Darrow, American lawyer
“There are no atheists in the foxholes of Bataan.”
— Douglas MacArthur
“An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.”
— Fulton J. Sheen
“I am an atheist, thank God!”
— Anonymous
“An atheist is one who hopes the Lord will do nothing to disturb his disbelief.”
— Franklin P. Jones
“There is only one greater folly than that of the fool who says in his heart there is no God, and that is the folly of the people that says with its head that it does not know whether there is a God or not.”
— Otto von Bismarck
“Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.”
— Thomas Huxley
“Don’t be an agnostic — be something.”
— Robert Frost
“Agnosticism is the philosophical, ethical and religious dry-rot of the modern world.”
— F. E. Abbot
“I don’t understand religion at all. I’m sure I’ll offend a lot of people by saying this, but I think it’s all nonsense. [Christian fundamentalism is a result of] a lack of education. They haven’t been exposed to what the world has to offer.”
— Andy Rooney, CBS “60 Minutes” commentator, at Tufts University, 11/18/04
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”
— Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American author
“I’m not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I’m a huge believer in. There’s a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion…. In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.”
— Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft Corporation
“If something is in me which can be called religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it…. 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 egotism….”
— Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist
“I don’t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.”
— Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist
“I turned to speak to God, about the world’s despair. But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn’t there… Forgive, O Lord, my little joke on Thee and I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me….I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.”
— Robert Frost, American poet.
“I wasn’t raised Catholic, but I used to go to Mass with my friends, and I viewed the whole business as a lot of very enthralling hocus-pocus. There’s a guy hanging upon the wall in the church, nailed to a cross and dripping blood, and everybody’s blaming themselves for that man’s torment, but I said to myself, ‘Forget it. I had no hand in that evil. I have no original sin. There’s no blood of any sacred martyr in my hands. I pass on all of this…. I believe that all important matters have to be settled here, not in the clouds somewhere after we kick off.”
— Billy Joel, American musician
“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet…. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich…. All religions have been made by men.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor
“Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror…. Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world…. Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense…. Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
— Francois Marie Arouet “Voltaire”, French author and playwright
“Religion is based … mainly on 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…. Fear is the parent of cruelty, therefore it is no wonder if religion and cruelty have gone hand-in-hand.”
— Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathemetician, and social critic
“History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it… Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent.”
— Robert A. Heinlen, American science-fiction author
“I’m 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.”
— Katherine Hepburn, actress
“I’m glad some people have that faith. I don’t have that faith. If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he’s done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world.”
— Dave Matthews, Australian rock musician
“The wretchedness of religion is at once an expression and a protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people. The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille.”
— Karl Marx, German economist and political philosopher
“Faith means not wanting to know what is true… So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there cannot be any answer to the question: What is truth? … The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, a self-derision, and self-mutilation… All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race – before it had learned the obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its God to be truthful and understandable in his communications… The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God… There is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body: fear therefore nothing any more.”
— Freidrich Nietzsche, German philosopher
“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic…. For myself, I do not believe in any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.”
— Charles Robert Darwin, English naturalist
“The whole tradition Christian concept of life is false. Throw those great Christian blinkers away and look around you, stand on your own two feet and be a man. Sex plays an tremendous part in life. It’s terrible to think we come into this world through some despicable act. Don’t believe all the tommy-rot the priests tell you; learn and prove everything by your own experience.”
— Frederick Delius, British composer (1862-1934)
“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…. At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.”
— George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born English playwright
“For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings. Environment is a sculptor — a painter. If we had been born in Constantinople, then most of us would have said: ‘There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.’ If our parents had lived on the banks of the Ganges, we would have been worshipers of Siva, longing for the heaven of Nirvana. As a rule, children love their parents, believe what they teach, and take great pride in saying that the religion of mother is good enough for them… All who doubted or denied would be lost. To live a moral and honest life — to keep your contracts, to take care of wife and child — to make a happy home — to be a good citizen, a patriot, a just and thoughtful man, was simply a respectable way of going to hell. God did not reward men for being honest, generous and brave, but for the act of faith. Without faith, all the so-called virtues were sins. And the men who practiced these virtues, without faith, deserved to suffer eternal pain. All of these comforting and reasonable things were taught by the ministers in their pulpits — by teachers in Sunday schools and by parents at home. The children were victims. They were assaulted in the cradle — in their mother’s arms. Then, the schoolmaster carried on the war against their natural sense, and all the books they read were filled with the same impossible truths. The poor children were helpless. The atmosphere they breathed was filled with lies — lies that mingled with their blood…. The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know…. A believer is a bird in a cage. A freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing… With soap, baptism is a good thing.”
— Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer
“It is fear that first brought Gods into the world.”
— Gallus Petronius, 1st Century Roman courtier
“The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.”
— Marquis de Sade, French libertine
“To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege.”
— Leo Tolstoy, Russian revolutionary
“I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.”
— Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch painter who committed suicide
“Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever… Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.”
— Sigmund Freud, German-born psychologist