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AtheistExile's Quotes Page

I've collected a lot of quotes (275 of them) over the years; they're presented here. If you have any quotes to add here, just let me know via our Member Forum or the Contact Us form.

By the way . . . the first one's mine :-)

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"If God wanted you to think, he wouldn't have given you religion!" ~Jim Ashby

"What luck for rulers, that men do not think." ~Adolph Hitler

"The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches." ~Aldous Huxley

"Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home." ~Carl Sagan

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." ~Carl Sagan

"The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the supression of ideas. ~Carl Sagan

"If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate." ~Carl Sagan

"If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal." ~Carl Sagan

"Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat. Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there. Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there and shouting 'I found it!'" ~Anonymously derived from a quote by H. L. Mencken ("A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.")

"If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote . . . Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy." ~Carl Sagan

"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." ~Carl Sagan

"Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close." ~Carl Sagan

"In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches. ~Carl Sagan

"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." ~Carl Sagan

"The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed." ~Carl Sagan

"Tax the FUCK out of the churches!" ~Frank Zappa

"Beware of the fish people, they are the true enemy." ~Frank Zappa

"Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over." ~Frank Zappa

"Get smart and I'll fuck you over -- sayeth The Lord." ~Frank Zappa

"Children are naïve -- they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble." ~Frank Zappa

"Nobody looks good with brown lipstick on." ~Frank Zappa

"To pretend that Islam has nothing to do with Terrorist Tuesday is to willfully ignore the obvious and to forever misinterpret events." ~Ibn Warraq

"Not all Muslims or all Arabs are terrorists. Nor are they implicated in the horrendous events of Tuesday." ~Ibn Warraq

"There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. There is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism: at most there is a difference of degree but not of kind." ~Ibn Warraq

"It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I'm wrong. The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right . . . Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?" ~Frank Zappa

"In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides." ~Heinrich Heine

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." ~Anonymous

"Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think." ~Horace Walpole

"Some people have views of God that are so broad and flexible that it is inevitable that they will find God wherever they look for him. One hears it said that 'God is the ultimate' or 'God is our better nature' or 'God is the universe.' Of course, like any other word, the word 'God' can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say that 'God is energy,' then you can find God in a lump of coal." ~Steven Weinberg

"The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others." ~Bertrand Russell

"Lighthouses are more helpful then churches." ~Benjamin Franklin

"Appeal to ignorance: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." ~Anonymous

"Funiculi, funicula, funic yourself." ~Noel Coward

"Myths die when history is born." ~M.M. Mangasarian

"They expect to go to Heaven on their knees." ~M.M. Mangasarian

"There is nothing which faith can not cover up from the light. But if a faith which ignores evidence isn't a superstition, what then is superstition?" ~M.M. Mangasarian

An argument which proves too much, proves nothing." ~M.M. Mangasarian

"Religion comes begging to us, when it can no longer burn us." ~Heinrich Heine

"Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me." ~Wafa Sultan

"Even a loser can win when he's up against a defeatist." ~Mark Steyn

"While religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra." ~Albert Einstein

"What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." ~Albert Einstein

"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." ~Albert Einstein

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion." ~Stephen Weinberg

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~Plato

"The truth should be independent of whoever says it." ~Tawfik Hamid

"Nice answer, wrong question." ~H. Allen Orr

"With apologies to Abe Lincoln, one needn't fool all the people all the time, just enough of the people at the right time." ~Bruce Grant

"Atheist n A person to be pitied in that he is unable to believe things for which there is no evidence, and who has thus deprived himself of a convenient means of feeling superior to others." ~Chaz Bufe

"Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all." ~Herbert Spencer

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." ~Yogi Berra

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system." ~Thomas Paine

"If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that's okay, he's God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite." ~Dennis McKinsey

"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color." ~Don Hirschberg

"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." ~Francis Bacon

"The President of the United States summons the nation to church on Thanksgiving Day to give thanks to "Almighty God" for the abundant harvest and all other blessings. But what has Almighty God -- I have no desire to appear irreverent -- what has Almighty God as a personal being to do with the harvests? If it is he who produces our crops, then being Almighty there should never be a failure of crops. But since crops frequently fail, it follows that there is no Almighty person in charge of them -- unless he brings failure purposely. Therefore, if God is to be thanked for large crops, he must be blamed when the crops are a failure. . . . If God sends the rain and the sunshine which develops and ripens our wheat, who sends the storms and the insects which destroy much of it? And if he sends both, then why not thank him for one and blame him for the other?" ~John Dietrich

"When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place." ~Pearl S. Buck

"Believing in gods always causes confusion." ~Pearl S. Buck

"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'" ~Quentin Crisp

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." ~Thomas Jefferson

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." ~Delos B. McKown

"Most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all." ~Michael Rivero

"The Atheist Bible, it could be said, has but one word: 'THINK'." ~Emmett Fields

"When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer." ~Stevie Wonder

"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 Roberts

"The faith that stands on authority is not faith." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly." ~Albert Einstein

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." ~Albert Einstein

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." ~Albert Einstein

"Without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people - first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy." Albert Einstein

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." ~Albert Einstein

"To take those fools in clerical garb seriously is to show them too much honor." (Comment on the Union of Orthodox Rabbis after expelling a rabbi because of his disbelief in God as a personal entity.) ~Albert Einstein

"Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience." ~Albert Einstein

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." ~Albert Einstein

"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts." ~Albert Einstein

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough." ~Albert Einstein

"I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts." ~Albert Einstein

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?" ~Albert Einstein

"Innovation is not the product of logical thought, even though the final product is tied to a logical structure." ~Albert Einstein

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." ~Albert Einstein

"Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest." ~Albert Einstein

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." ~Albert Einstein

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." ~Albert Einstein

"One thing I have learned in a long life: All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have." ~Albert Einstein

"Man seeks to form for himself, in whatever manner is suitable for him, a simplified and lucid image of the world, and so to overcome the world of experience by striving to replace it to some extent by this image. This is what the painter does, and the poet, the speculative philosopher, the natural scientist, each in his own way. Into this image and its formation, he places the center of gravity of his emotional life, in order to attain the peace and serenity that he cannot find within the narrow confines of swirling personal experience." ~Albert Einstein

"Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means." ~Albert Einstein

"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility… The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle." ~Albert Einstein

"The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life." ~Albert Einstein

"Problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them." ~Albert Einstein

"The search for truth is more precious than its possession." ~Albert Einstein

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." ~Albert Einstein

"Truth is what stands the test of experience." ~Albert Einstein

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." ~Albert Einstein

"Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability." ~George Bernard Shaw

"Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." ~Ambrose Bierce

"An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' 'No,' said the priest, 'not if you did not know.' 'Then why,' asked the Inuit earnestly, 'did you tell me?'" ~Annie Dillard

"I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do." ~D. Dale Gulledge

"You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood. However, as an adult, you are one hundred percent responsible for fixing it." ~Ken Keyes, Jr.

"Atheism is more than just the knowledge that Gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature." ~Carl Sagan

"The foundation of morality is to ... give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge. " ~T. H. Huxley

"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes." ~James Morrow

"The last Christian died on the cross." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

"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

"If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses." ~Lenny Bruce

"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism." ~Carl Sagan

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means." ~George Bernard Shaw

"It is the position of some theists that their right to freedom OF religion is abridged when they are not allowed to violate the rationalists' right to freedom FROM religion." ~James T. Green

"A dogma will thrive in soil where the truth could not get root." ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays

"I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said 'Stop! don't do it!' 'Why shouldn't I?' he said. I said, 'Well, there's so much to live for!' He said, 'Like what?' I said, 'Well...are you religious or atheist?' He said, 'Religious.' I said, 'Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?' He said, 'Christian.' I said, 'Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?' He said, 'Protestant.' I said, 'Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?' He said, 'Baptist!' I said, 'Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist church of god or Baptist church of the lord?' He said, 'Baptist church of god!' I said, 'Me too! Are you original Baptist church of god, or are you reformed Baptist church of god?' He said, 'Reformed Baptist church of god!' I said, 'Me too! Are you reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?' He said, 'Reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!' I said, 'Die, heretic scum,' and pushed him off." ~Emo Phillips

"The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car." ~George Bernard Shaw

"One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't." ~George Bernard Shaw

"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. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." ~George Bernard Shaw

"Customs will reconcile people to any atrocity." ~George Bernard Shaw

"Islam is the best religion, with the worst followers." ~George Bernard Shaw

"The customs of your tribe are not laws of nature." ~George Bernard Shaw

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." ~George Bernard Shaw

"To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true." ~Bertrand Russell

"Most people would die sooner than think - in fact they do so." ~Bertrand Russell

"Knowledge, like other good things, is difficult, but not impossible; the dogmatist forgets the difficulty, the skeptic denies the possibility. Both are mistaken, and their errors, when widespread, produce social disaster." ~Bertrand Russell

"I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world." ~Bertrand Russell

"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men." ~Bertrand Russell

"I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue." ~Bertrand Russell

"While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know." ~Bertrand Russell

"Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false." ~Bertrand Russell

"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." ~Bertrand Russell

"The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible." ~Bertrand Russell

"The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately." ~Bertrand Russell

"It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true." ~Bertrand Russell

"What is wanted is not the will-to-believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite." ~Bertrand Russell

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." ~Bertrand Russell

"The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics." ~Bertrand Russell

"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand." ~Bertrand Russell

"The worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise." ~Bertrand Russell

"In a man whose reasoning powers are good, fallacious arguments are evidence of bias." ~Bertrand Russell

"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." ~Bertrand Russell

"Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know." ~Bertrand Russell

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." ~Bertrand Russell

"The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours." ~Bertrand Russell

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." ~Bertrand Russell

"People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them." ~Dave Barry

"If God doesn't like the way I live, let him tell me, not you." ~Author Unknown

"Those people who tell me that I'm going to hell while they are going to heaven somehow make me very glad that we're going to separate destinations." ~Martin Terman

"Religion seems to have a way of making people abandon logic." ~Amanda Baxter

"God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power." ~Robert G. Ingersoll

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love." ~Butch Hancock

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support." ~John Buchan

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car." ~Author Unknown

"Instead of being born again, why not just grow up?" ~Author Unknown

"To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals." ~Don Schrader

"If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment." ~Voltaire

"Christian fundamentalism: the doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life." ~Andrew Lias

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." ~Voltaire

"Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver." ~Robert G. Ingersoll

"Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing 'Does not!'" ~Anonymous

"We are not accountable for the sins of Adam." ~Robert G. Ingersoll

"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination." ~Mark Twain

"The wages of sin are death, but after they take the taxes out, it's more like a tired feeling, really." ~Paula Poundstone

"Scriptures: the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based." ~Ambrose Bierce

"There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction." ~Mark Twain

"Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it." ~C.C. Colton

"Impiety, n.: Your irreverence toward my deity." ~Ambrose Bierce

"Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it." ~George Bernard Shaw

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself." ~Richard Burton

"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death." ~George Carlin

"It is fear that first brought gods into the world." ~Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon

"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned." ~Author Unknown

"There are three religious truths: 1) Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. 2) Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian faith. 3) Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store or at Hooters." ~Author Unknown

"Traveler: "God has been mighty good to your fields, Mr. Farmer."
Farmer: "You should have seen how he treated them when I wasn't around."
~Author Unknown

"I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence." ~Doug McLeod

"Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism." ~William James

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." ~Anne Lamott

"Religion is the metaphysics of the masses." ~Arthur Schopenhauer

"Illusion is the first of all pleasures." ~Voltaire

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." ~Niels Bohr

"The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The Christian Right is neither." ~Author Unknown

"Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose." ~Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist

"Without doubt half the ethical rules they din into our ears are designed to keep us at work." ~Llewelyn Powys