Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven... it's easy if you try.

John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today...

Jodie Foster

I'm an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Even though I don't believe in God. We celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids. They love it, and when they say, 'Are we Jewish?' or 'Are we Catholic?' I say, 'Well, I'm not, but you can choose when you're 18. But isn't this fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar?'

Jodie Foster

People are always surprised when I say that I'm an atheist.

Carl Sagan

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

Carl Sagan

Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.

Charles Dickens

I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degradation left in the world.

Charles Stross

I'm an atheist .I was raised in British reform Judaism, which is not like American reform Judaism, much less any other strain of organised religion. So: no cults here.

Bill Maher

If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.

Edmund White

I'm an atheist, I always thought, 'This is it.' If there is going to be a heaven, it should be on earth. I feel much happier than most people. I'm fairly stoic about death, but I'm not keen on dying if it's going to be long and protracted. I don't have dark nights of the soul, except occasionally. I'm such a little busy bee.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

You'll be pleased to hear, Christopher, that I am no longer a Muslim liberal but an atheist [....] I find that it obviates the necessity for any cognitive dissonance.

A sanctimonious man is one who under an atheist king would be atheist

Bertrand Russell

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true

Benjamin Disraeli

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Calvin Coolidge

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.

Carson McCullers

But you haven't never loved God nor even nair person. You hard and tough as cowhide. But just the same I knows you. This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don't love and don't have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined.

Al Gore

I affirm my faith when I'm asked about it. But I always try to do so in a way that communicates absolute respect, not only for people who worship in a different way, but just as much respect for those who do not believe in God and who are atheists.

Arthur C. Clarke

Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?

Arthur C. Clarke

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

Arthur C. Clarke

I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.

Arthur C. Clarke

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

Dan Barker

You believe in a book that has sticks turning into snakes, and you say we are the ones that need help?

Dan Barker

I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief.

Dan Barker

I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil—you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself.

Bob Dole

We are a nation conceived, born and nurtured by faith... Our faith is declared in our Constitution, on our currency and in our lives.

Blaise Pascal

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

Charles Spurgeon

I heard the story of a man, a blasphemer...an atheist, who was converted singularly by a sinful action of his. He had written on a piece of paper, "God is nowhere," and ordered his child to read it, for he would make him an atheist too. The child spelled it, "God is n-o-w h-e-r-e. God is now here." It was a truth instead of a lie, and the arrow pierced the man's own heart.

Aristophanes

Surely you do not believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

Charles Bukowski

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Even an atheist may be ready to concede that a good wine is the drink of gods.

Stephen Jay Gould

We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes—one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.

Stephen Jay Gould

We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists