Famous Quotes & Sayings

Christopher Hitchens

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.

Christopher Hitchens

Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. ... Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated

Christopher Hitchens

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

Christopher Durang

I never graduated to being an atheist. I only graduated to being an agnostic.

Geraldine Brooks

I'm a praying atheist. When I hear an ambulance siren, I ask for a blessing for those people in trouble, knowing that no one's listening. I think it's just a habit of mindfulness.

Herman Melville

What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?

Henry David Thoreau

I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.

H. L. Mencken

A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought.

H. L. Mencken

Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.

H. L. Mencken

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

Jerry Falwell

Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.

Jean Rostand

The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.

Giovanni Papini

Humans: become atheists each and all! God will nevertheless welcome you with all his heart!

Ian Mckellen

I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about - nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund-raiser) because I don't want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern - legal and social equality for gay people worldwide.

Iain Banks

I just took [my cancer diagnosis] as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought "ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this?" and I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it.

Hugh Miller

The footprint of the savage traced in the sand is sufficient to attest the presence of man to the atheist who will not recognize God, whose hand is impressed upon the entire universe.

Gore Vidal

To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.

Gore Vidal

Of course his dust would be absorbed in other living things and to that degree at least he would exist again, though it was plain enough that the specific combination which was he would never exist again.

Gore Vidal

I'm a born - again atheist.

Gore Vidal

Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.

Jacques Derrida

I rightly pass for an atheist.

James Freeman Clarke

The atheist has no hope.

Jim Jefferies

I'm not scared of dying, because I'm an atheist. I won't even know I'm dead. You know why? Because I'll be fùckin' dead.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.

Gillian Anderson

What happens in our lives is not really anybody's fault but our own... When I was in high school, I was in an atheist crowd, and it was the consensus that religion was a crutch.

Frank Zappa

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. 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.

Frank Zappa

If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine - but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good - and CARES about any of it - to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.

Frank Zappa

There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.

George H. W. Bush

Atheists are not Americans.

George H. W. Bush

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.

George H. W. Bush

Lincoln said you cannot be President without spending some item on your knees. I have repeated that and a bunch of Atheists got all over me. Wait a minute. Does that mean that you cannot be President if you are an Atheist? I say yea that does mean that.