Quotes on Atheist

Men have never fully used [their] powers to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing.

In the 'bullshit department' a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman.

In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable.

If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.

Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable, has lost its explanatory value and is becoming an intellectual and moral burden to our thought. It no longer convinces or comforts, and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief.

If you trace back all those links in the chain that had to be in place for me to be here, the laws of probability maintain that my very existence is miraculous. But then after however many decades, less than a hundred years, they disburse and I cease to be. So while they're all congregated and coordinated to make me, then-and I speak her on behalf of all those trillions of atoms-I should really make the most of things.

Math . . . music .. . starry nights . . . These are secular ways of achieving transcendence, of feeling lifted into a grand perspective. It's a sense of being awed by existence that almost obliterates the self. Religious people think of it as an essentially religious experience but it's not. It's an essentially human experience.

When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust.

Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.

I look around the world and see so many wonderful things that I love and enjoy and benefit from, whether it's art or music or clothing or food and all the rest. And I'd like to add a little to that goodness.

It doesn't have to be the Grand Canyon, it could be a city street, it could be the face of another human being - Everything is full of wonder.

Knowing there is a world that will outlive you, there are people whose well-being depends on how you live your life, affects the way you live your life, whether or not you directly experience those effects. You want to be the kind of person who has the larger view, who takes other people's interests into account, who's dedicated to the principles that you can justify, like justice, knowledge, truth, beauty and morality.

It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian.

Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them.

To have a positive religion is not necessary. To be in harmony with yourself and the universe is what counts, and this is possible without positive and specific formulation in words.

I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an explanation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious ad hoc magic.

There are also people who say it's God's curse on me that I should have it near my throat because that was the organ of blasphemy which I used for so many years. I've used many other organs to blaspheme as well if it comes to that.

The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.

A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing.

If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes.