Quotes on Atheism

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to Heaven.

Religions are all alike- founded upon fables and mythologies.

The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.

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 egotisms.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.

The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.

Belief is the death of intelligence.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say that it is in one word - prayer. Live and die without prayer, and you will pray long enough when you get to hell.

Atheism is not a religion. Abstinence is not a sex position.

The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they've realised they can't get away with it.