Atheist quotes
1.8K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
"It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Without the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power we could have little faith in ourselves. We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love. Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is a part of an unending plan."
"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism."
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god."
"... happily the Government of the United States... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."
"It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."
"The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."
"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky."
"A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to religion"
"To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world?"
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
"One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up."
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses."
"Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name."
"On the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists."
"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
"It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world."
