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Posted By: Other Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 03/28/07 06:55 PM
For those of you who have collected a few atheist, agnostic, or even deist quotes through the years, I've come up with what I hope will be an interesting way to share them. Rather than simply listing them all at one time, I thought it would be interesting to list them according to the author's name, alphabetically, beginning with the letter A and proceeding with a new letter with each new entry. You can include as many quotes from that author as you like (within reason), are from any other author whose last name begins with that later, but there will only be letter per day. So if you have a favorite author whose quotes you'd like to include, you'll want to start getting your list together and watching the forums closely for the moment when your letter presents itself. To get things rolling, I'll start us off with the letter A:


Adams, Douglas

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife." - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move." - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Last Chance to See

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Last Chance to See

"A man didn�t understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. "But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren�t there?" - as retold by Richard Dawkins in "Lament for Douglas"
Posted By: Zim Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 03/29/07 05:57 PM
Adams, John

"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that has ever existed?"

President John Adams, Letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 03/30/07 01:20 AM
And now for the B's:

Bierce, Ambrose
Entries from The Devil's Dictionary:

Bigot, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

Deluge, n. A notable first experiment in baptism which washed away the sins (and sinners) of the world.

Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity.

Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.

Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
Posted By: Skeptic Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 03/30/07 06:13 PM
Two from Arthur C Clarke

"Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future."

"I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent."


"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these 10 things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time...but he loves you." --George Carlin

"When a man ceases to believe in god, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in everything." --G.K. Chesterson

"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense." --Chapman Cohen
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 03/31/07 08:34 PM
Today's quotes are brought to you by the letter "D".

And since I'm a French teacher, I'm going with:
Diderot, Denis

"I believe in God, although I live very happily with atheists.... It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God."

"From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step."

"Scepticism is the first step towards truth."

"But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!"

"The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual."

"We encounter some phenomenon that is, in our opinion, beyond the powers of man, and immediately we say, 'Is it the work of God'. Our vanity will admit no lesser explanation. Can we not reason with a little less pride and a little more philosophy? If nature presents us with a knot that is difficult to untie, then let us leave it as it is, let us not insist on cutting it there and then and on employing for the task the hand of a being who thereupon becomes a knot even more difficult to untie than the first. Ask an Indian why the globe remains suspended in the air and he will reply that it is borne on the back of an elephant. And on what does the elephant rest? On a tortoise. And the tortoise, who supports that?"
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/01/07 03:03 PM
Richard Dawkins

�There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?�


"...it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions."


"Atheism means non-belief in the particular cult that happens to pervade the society under discussion. In America that means the cult of Yahweh, the God of the Jews commandeered by the Christians, Muslims and Mormons. Today, everyone takes it for granted that we are all atheists with respect to Thor and Wotan, Zeus and Poseidon, Mithras and Ammon Ra. If asked why you don't believe in Thor's hammer, you would probably say something like "Why is the onus on me to justify my nonbelief in Thor, given that there is not the smallest positive reason for belief?" You might go further and add that thunder, which was at one time attributed to Thor's hammer, now has a better explanation in terms of electric charges in the clouds. While technically agnostic about all those ancient gods, and about fairies and leprechauns too (you can't disprove them either), in practice we don't believe in any of them, and we feel no onus to explain why."


"My last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th 2001, followed by the "National Day of Prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place."


Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/01/07 05:00 PM
From various "D" authors:

Danelius, Byron:
"Religion provides the solace for the turmoil that it creates."

Darrow, Clarence:
"Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey."

Dick, Philip K:
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
"Dogmas of every kind put assertion in the place of reason and give rise to more contention, bitterness, and want of charity than any other influence in human affairs."

Dickinson, Emily:
"'Faith' is a fine invention, when gentlemen can see
But microscopes are prudent, in an emergency."

Darwin, Charles:
"But I own that I cannot see ... evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice."
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/01/07 05:15 PM
Various "E" authors:

Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."

"The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next."

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

Eco, Umberto:
"Fear prophets ... and those prepared to die for the truth, as a rule make many others die with them, often before them, and at times instead of them."

Edison, Thomas:
"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God."

Eliot, George:
"Your dunce who can't do his sums always has a taste for the infinite."

Einstein, Albert:
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

Epicurus:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/02/07 02:02 AM
Epicurus
If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.


Albert Einstein
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.


Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/02/07 06:49 PM
Freud, Sigmund
"The idea of God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever."

Franklin, Benjamin
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."

France, Anatole
"If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/02/07 11:28 PM

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
......Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1758


"Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?"
......Jules Feiffer

Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/03/07 06:17 AM
"Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought."
.....Henry Graham Greene (1904-1991)
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/04/07 06:19 PM
Harris, Sam
"Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won't do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make spectacular claims upon your attention."

Haynes, Charles
"If the aim is to keep 'Christ' in the shopping-mall Christmas or to ensure that pagan trees and mistletoe don�t lose their Christian labels, then it might make sense to attack presidents and business owners who commit the �happy holiday� sin. But if the goal is to restore the religious meaning of the Christian holy day, then they are aiming at the wrong Target."

Hazlitt, William
"The garb of religion is the best cloak for power."

Heine, Heinrich
"Religion cannot sink lower than when somehow it is raised to a state religion ... It becomes then an avowed mistress."

Heinlein, Robert
"Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."

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

Hoffer, Eric
"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."

Hugo, Victor
"There is in every village a torch: the schoolmaster -- and an extinguisher: the parson."

Huxley, Thomas Henry
"Skepticism is the highest duty, and blind faith the one impardonable sin."
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/05/07 10:57 PM
I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.
Robert Ingersoll
from the Field-Ingersoll Debate (Part 2): "A Reply To The Rev Henry M Field, DD"
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/06/07 10:44 PM
Jefferson, Thomas

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society."

" the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed."

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government."

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/09/07 03:55 AM
"The death of dogma is the birth of morality."

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
German philosopher, considered by many the most influential thinker of modern times


Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/10/07 04:17 PM
President Abraham Lincoln
"What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree."

John Locke
"I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, it is a matter of faith, and above reason."

Lucretius
"All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher."

C.S. Lewis
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Anne Lamott
"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."

Pope Leo XIII
"The equal toleration of all religions...is the same as atheism."

Gypsy Rose Lee
"Praying is like a rocking chair -- it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere."

Dr. James Langer
"I wouldn't want my doctor thinking that intelligent design was an equally plausible hypothesis to evolution any more than I would want my airplane pilot believing in the flat Earth."

William Edward Hartpole Lecky
"The doctrine of a material hell in its effect was to chill and deaden the sympathies, predispose men to inflict suffering, and to retard the march of civilization."

Robert E. Lee
"Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom of opinion have always proved themselves intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?"

Joseph Lewis
"Man's inhumanity to man will continue as long as man loves God more than he loves his fellow man."

Walter Lippman
"The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble across a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it representative of a whole class."
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/11/07 03:26 AM
Richard Lederer
"There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages."


Gustaf Lindborg
"The sailor does not pray for wind, he learns to sail"
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/11/07 03:28 AM
Doug McLeod
"I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence"

H. L. Mencken
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart"

Ferdinand Magellan
"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church"
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/12/07 04:37 PM
Isaac Newton:
"If the ancient churches, in debating and deciding the greatest mysteries of religion, knew nothing of these two texts, I understand not why we should be so fond of them now the debate is over."

Friedrich Nietzsche:
"Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life."
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/18/07 01:33 AM
George Orwell:
"One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one�s intelligence."

"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."

"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent."
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/19/07 05:58 PM
Frederick Nietzsche
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/19/07 06:06 PM
Robert Owen (1771-1858) British reformer
"Thus I was forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief in every religion which had been taught to man. But my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity -- not for a sect, or a party, or for a country or a colour -- but for the human race, and with a real and ardent desire to do good."
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/19/07 06:43 PM
Thomas Paine:

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be true.

Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.

One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Posted By: Alexandra Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/20/07 11:55 AM
Originally Posted By: Skeptic
Two from Arthur C Clarke

"Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.


I can only surmise that Mr Clarke has not completed his homework on this topic...Whilst I fully comprehend his clubbing Buddhism, as a religion, together with the others, its singular lack of a God makes it quite unlike them. Additionally, could I also point out that Buddhism leaves nothing to "chance".

Just my two cents'/rupees' worth.... wink
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/20/07 02:58 PM
Ok, but we did the C's two weeks ago!
Posted By: Alexandra Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/20/07 04:41 PM
I know, but dyslexya is so liberating....!! laugh
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/20/07 05:36 PM
LOL
Posted By: Alexandra Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/20/07 06:35 PM
(and my surname begins with a 'P'..... wink )
Originally Posted By: Alexandra
I know, but dyslexya is so liberating....!! laugh


Dyslexia huh? Do you belong to the ADN? The National Dyslexia Association? laugh
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/23/07 09:09 PM
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.
Penn (of Penn and Teller)

The moment that one loses confidence in God, or immortality in the universe, [one becomes] more self-reliant, more courageous, and the more solicitous of aid where only human aid is possible.
Samuel Putnam


When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity.
When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion
Robert M. Pirsig

Who needs Satan when you have a God like this?
Robert M. Price

Re: The Bible. - If I watched a football match then orally relayed the events. This is repeated from father to son orally for 500 years. How accurate do you think the resulting report would be? Yet the first thing any theist does is quote the Bible!!
Chris Parry


...and my favorite : )

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.
Emo Philips
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/24/07 06:59 PM
Francis Quarles:
Flatter not thyself in thy faith in God if thou hast not charity for thy neighbor.

Salvatore Quasimodo:
After the turbulence of death, moral principles and even religious proofs are called into question.

Pasquier Quesnel:
Zeal is very blind, or badly regulated, when it encroaches upon the rights of others.

Edgar Quinet:
What are all political and social institutions, but always a religion, which in realizing itself, becomes incarnate in the world?

Sally Quinn:
It is only in the fundamentalist religions that women are relegated to second class. Radical Evangelicals, Muslims, and Jews all have the same view of women.
Mary Poppins - "Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down"

Brad Pitt as Doc Holliday - "You're a daisy if you do"

Norm from Cheers - "Women, can't live with 'em....pass the beer nuts."

Outlaw Josey Wales - "Well, you gonna pull them pistols or just whistle Dixie?"

Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp - "You tell 'em I'm coming and Hell's coming with me."

Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/27/07 05:15 AM
Hmmm...those don't appear to be alphabetically placed, but I suppose one might say they are atheist quotes, if by atheist you mean, "A person who talks about anything and everything except religion."

And now for the letter R:

Bertrand Russell:
There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.

We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.

I cannot...deny that [religion] has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.
Yeah, my bad. I forgot it was it was an alphabetical game and I was just having a little fun by putting quotes from movies in there.

Just trying to be not so serious all of the time. smile
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 04/28/07 02:24 AM
LOL. Ok. These quotes do tend to get a bit serious, don't they?

And now back to our regularly scheduled program: the letter "S".

Carl Sagan:
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

William Shakespeare:
It is a heretic that makes the fire, not she which burns in it.

Arthur Schopenhauer:
Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

Seneca:
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Paul Tillich:

Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.

Paul Tillich:

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life.

Roman Tombstone:

Do not pass by my epitaph, traveler.
But having stopped, listen and learn, then go your way.
There is no boat in Hades, no ferryman Charon,
No caretaker Aiakos, no dog Cerberus.
All we who are dead below
Have become bones and ashes, but nothing else.
I have spoken to you honestly, go on, traveler,
Lest even while dead I seem loquacious to you.

Mark Twain:

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular one is Providence.

Mark Twain:

Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion �- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.

Mark Twain:

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

Autobiography, 1959




Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 05/01/07 04:57 AM
Carl Sagan
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate....Try science.
The Demon-Haunted World


Mark Twain
"Man is a marvelous curiosity ... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea."
[Letters from the Earth]


Posted By: Skeptic Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 05/01/07 11:14 AM
A little shocked to see amadeus quoting Mark Twain who was quite obviously an atheist. Are we making some headway here?

My favorite is Carl Sagan. I have been waiting for the S.

I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
- Carl Sagan

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
-Carl Sagan

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.
-Carl Sagan

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-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?
-Carl Sagan

Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy. -Carl Sagan
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 05/05/07 12:38 AM
Miguel de Unamuno:
The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

Benjamin Underwood:
There is no argument worthy of the name that will justify the union of the Christian religion with the State. Every consideration of justice and equality forbids it ... Every sentiment of honor, every manly feeling, a righteous indignation at injustice. a determination to submit to no religious intolerance, love of peace and the welfare and prosperity of our country, with an ardent and unfaltering attachment to republican institutions -- all combine to induce us to demand a separation of Church and State, total and complete, now, henceforth, and forever.

John Updike:
Whenever religion touches science, it gets burned. In the sixteen century astronomy, in the seventeenth microbiology, in the eighteenth geology and paleontology, in the nineteenth Darwin's biology all grotesquely extended the world-frame and sent churchmen scurrying for cover in ever smaller, more shadowy nooks, little gloomy ambiguous caves in the psyche where even now neurology is cruelly harrying them, gouging them out from the multifolded brain like wood lice from under the woodpile.
Unknown:

Some children's answers to church school questions - from the Church of England


Voltaire:

If God did not exist it would be necessary for us to invent Him.

Voltaire:

When it's a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

Voltaire

A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.


Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 05/07/07 07:30 PM
Ali, seems you might have cornered the market on well known Athiest worth quoting who's last name starts with 'U', I have to admit when written like that I can see why it's kinda a short list sooooooooo going to post two of the numerable credited 'Unknown' quotes I liked.

Unknown
Mankind is the puddle, marvelling at how perfectly the pothole conforms to its shape.

Unknown
Atheism is a religion, just like "off" is a TV channel
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 05/08/07 05:17 PM
Voltaire
Which is more dangerous: fanaticism or atheism? Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion whereas fanaticism does; atheism is opposed to crime and fanaticism causes crimes to be committed.

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

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Kurt Vonnegut
There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

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

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.

The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front.

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

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 05/09/07 11:32 PM
Alice Walker:
What the mind doesn�t understand it worships or fears.

George Washington:
If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.

Walt Whitman:
Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.

Daniel Webster:
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

Oscar Wilde:
The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity.

Mary Wollstonecraft:
In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.
Posted By: Other Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 05/11/07 02:51 PM
And finally, X, Y, and Z:

William Butler Yeats:
Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine, and could take a human or grotesque shape and dance among the shadows; and that deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were not less divine and changeable. They saw in the rainbow the still-bent bow of a god thrown down in his negligence; they heard in the thunder the sound of his beaten water jar, or the tumult of his chariot wheels; and when a sudden flight of wild ducks, or of crows, passed over their heads, they thought they were gazing at the dead hastening to their rest.

Frank Zindler:
Consider: what could be more American than the principle that every person is to be held accountable for his or her crimes only? Could anything be more un-American than the Second Commandment's warning that "I Yahweh, thy God, am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation�"? Not even the Common Law would have hung a man because his grandfather had stolen a horse!
Posted By: Darwins Monkeyboy Re: Atheist Quotes Alphabet Game - 05/11/07 05:23 PM
Steven Weinberg
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Matt Woodard
Religious sounds dandy, but so do unicorns.

Frank Zappa
The revolutionaries who got this country started were not, as Pat Robertson would have us believe, a bunch of wig-headed Jeezo-Grovelers, whimpering for guidance from The Unseen Hand. They had a First Amendment premonition about pimp-weasels like him

Stupidity has a certain charm --
ignorance does not.

The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden.
The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of
knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is
because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could
be in the Garden of Eden if you had just keep your [censored]
mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

Luke Zielinsk
For Lent I gave up religion�

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