Famous Quotes & Sayings

Frederick Buechner

Unbelief is as much of a choice as belief is. What makes it in many ways more appealing is that whereas to believe in something requires some measure of understanding and effort, not to believe doesn't require much of anything at all.

Henny Youngman

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge.

George Herbert

Civill Wars of France made a million of Atheists, and 30000 Witches.

Chris Hedges

The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention.

Chris Hedges

The greatest danger that besets us does not come from believers or atheists; it comes from those who, under the guise of religion, science or reason, imagine that we can free ourselves from the limitations of human nature and perfect the human species.

Isaac Newton

I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by men who were inspired. I study the Bible daily. Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors.

Michael Newdow

because I am an atheist and this offends me.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

Jethro Tull

In the beginning Man created God: and in the image of Man created he him.

Jean-Paul Sartre

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

Friedrich Nietzsche

However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots KNEW!

George Bernard Shaw

The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

George Bernard Shaw

God's trustiest lieutenants often lack official credentials. They may be professed atheists who are also men of honour and high public spirit.

Galileo Galilei

I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them.

Galileo Galilei

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

Erica Jong

But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.

Erica Jong

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.

Hannah More

In agony or danger, no nature is atheist. The mind that knows not what to fly to, flies to God.

Greg Graffin

As I’ve said, I’ve never believed in God, which technically makes me an atheist (since the prefix “a” means “not” or “without”). But I have problems with the word “atheism.” It defines what someone is not rather than what someone is. It would be like calling me an a-instrumentalist for Bad Religion rather than the band’s singer. Defining yourself as against something says very little about what you are for.

Greg Graffin

I don't bill myself as an atheist but as a naturalist. Naturalism is a belief system. A lot of scientists bristle at that. We all have to believe we can find the truth. Evidence is my guide. I rely on observation, experimentation and verification.

J. D. Salinger

I said old Jesus probably would've puked if He could see it - all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would've liked would be the guy who plays the kettle drums in the orchestra.

Jack Germond

I have been an atheist my entire adult life. I do not proselytize, however. Nor do I question the faith of others. I just don't want to be obliged to accept someone else's faith as a factor in my government.

Bede Griffiths

Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery.

C. S. Lewis

A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid.

C. S. Lewis

Unless thought is valid we have no reason to believe in the real universe.

C. S. Lewis

Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere "opiate of the people" have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor.

C. S. Lewis

In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere — "Bibles laid open, millions of surprises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and stratagems." God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

C. S. Lewis

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.

Carl Reiner

I am an atheist. I have a very different take on who God is. Man invented God because he needed him. God is us.

Carl Sagan

At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion.

Carl Sagan

An atheist has to know more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no God.