Quotes on Atheism

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death.

Religion is the organization of spirituality into something that became the hand maiden of conquerors. Nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors, and used as the framework to control their minds.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar

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.

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.

What's the difference between the Lone Ranger and God? There really is a Lone Ranger.

Give me a child for the first 5 years of his life and he will be mine forever.

Atheism is having a heyday in the born-again United States.

Life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion...[has] divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.

We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.

A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult.

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*

If there be a God and one has never sought him, it will be small consolation to remember that one could not get proof of his existence.

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.