In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty. ~Thomas Jefferson
I didn't know I had a quarrel with him. ~Henry Thoreau in answer to the question, "Have you made your peace with God?"
In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than the practitioners. ~Jonathon Miller
I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. ~George Carlin
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. ~Thomas Jefferson
Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it. ~Diderot, Pensées philosophiques, 1746
If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did." ~Jack Handey, "Deep Thoughts"
When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out. ~Frank Sinatra
My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance — but for us, not for God. ~Albert Einstein
Oh, honey, God don't care which church you go, long as you show up! ~Robert Harling, Steel Magnolias
Some people would have us love, or rather obey God, chiefly because he outbids the devil. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist. ~G.C. Lichtenberg
I refuse to be labeled immoral merely because I am godless. ~Peter Walker
What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. ~George Santayana, Reason in Religion
Scriptures: the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. ~Ambrose Bierce
"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D." "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. ~Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction. ~Author Unknown
A man without religion is like a horse without a bridle. ~Latin Proverb
There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave. ~Louis Kronenberger
The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles? ~John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1815 June 20th
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens. ~Michel de Montaigne, translated
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all. ~Denis Diderot
How many observe Christ's birthday! How few his precepts!
O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.
~Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it. ~C.C. Colton
To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely. ~Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinthes, 1962
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. ~Francis Bacon, Essays: Of Atheism, 1625
There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said "Let us pray," and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible. ~Desmond M. Tutu, "Religious Human Rights and the Bible"
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes. ~James Feibleman, Understanding Philosophy, 1973
I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings. Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels. ~Pearl S. Buck
An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?" ~Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
The faith that stands on authority is not faith. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. ~Edgar Allen Poe
On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position one hundred percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of conservatism. ~Barry Goldwater
People who rely most on God rely least on themselves. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays
God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning. ~Imamu Amiri Baraka
Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny. ~George Santayana
To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God. ~Victor Hugo
It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity. ~Abraham Lincoln, quoted in What Great Men Think Of Religion by Ira Cardiff
Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains.... But it can put mountains where there are none. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1879
The Bible is literature, not dogma. ~George Santayana
The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings. ~Garrett Hardin
The act of bellringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people. ~Ezra Pound
Take no alarm, dear reader, at the sound of the word Religion, for I have not the least idea of conducting you into some dark, subterranean cathedral where the air is oppressive and unnatural, but would lead you right out under heaven's sunny dome, where the joyous gospel of nature and inspiration are breathed into the soul....
This cosmical religion, broad as the world and reaching out to the infinite, as far transcends the man-made creeds that run counter to nature's laws, as the sky transcends all cathedrals that lift up their puny spires beneath it. I have aimed to lead my dear struggling human brothers and sisters into the vestibule of the Temple of Life where are joys forevermore, and where the radiant soul of things begins to appear.
~Edwin D. Babbitt, Religion as Revealed by the Material and Spiritual Universe, 1881
In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it. ~John Updike, A Month of Sundays, 1975
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. ~Mark Twain
In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination. ~Mark Twain
Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion. ~Robert Green Ingersoll
How can the Church be received as a trustworthy guide in the invisible, which falls into so many errors in the visible? ~John W. Draper
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. ~Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long
The Theologian is an owl, sitting on an old dead branch in the tree of human knowledge, and hooting the same old hoots that have been hooted for hundreds and thousands of years, but he has never given a hoot for progress. ~Emmet F. Fields
When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned. ~Robert Ingersoll, Some Reasons Why
Religions are like farts. Yours is good, but everyone else's stinks. ~Picket Fences
Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing "Does not!" ~Author Unknown
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. ~H.L. Mencken
If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment. ~Voltaire
God is innocent. Noah built in a flood plain. ~Author Unknown
To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. ~Ghose Aurobindo
Nowhere is there an account or portrait of Christ laughing... he is always stern, serious and as gloomy as a prison guard. Never does one see him laughing until tears appear in his eyes like the roly-poly squint-eyed Buddha guffawing with arms upraised. ~Author Unknown
The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature. ~Alfred North Whitehead
Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it. ~Søren Kierkegaard, Time, 1946 December 16th
Christian fundamentalism: the doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life. ~Andrew Lias
Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founders' than any other agency in the world. ~Richard Le Gallienne
I didn't know I had a quarrel with him. ~Henry Thoreau in answer to the question, "Have you made your peace with God?"
In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than the practitioners. ~Jonathon Miller
I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. ~George Carlin
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. ~Thomas Jefferson
Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it. ~Diderot, Pensées philosophiques, 1746
If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did." ~Jack Handey, "Deep Thoughts"
When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out. ~Frank Sinatra
My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance — but for us, not for God. ~Albert Einstein
Oh, honey, God don't care which church you go, long as you show up! ~Robert Harling, Steel Magnolias
Some people would have us love, or rather obey God, chiefly because he outbids the devil. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist. ~G.C. Lichtenberg
I refuse to be labeled immoral merely because I am godless. ~Peter Walker
What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. ~George Santayana, Reason in Religion
Scriptures: the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. ~Ambrose Bierce
"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D." "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. ~Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction. ~Author Unknown
A man without religion is like a horse without a bridle. ~Latin Proverb
There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave. ~Louis Kronenberger
The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles? ~John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1815 June 20th
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens. ~Michel de Montaigne, translated
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all. ~Denis Diderot
How many observe Christ's birthday! How few his precepts!
O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.
~Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it. ~C.C. Colton
To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely. ~Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinthes, 1962
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. ~Francis Bacon, Essays: Of Atheism, 1625
There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said "Let us pray," and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible. ~Desmond M. Tutu, "Religious Human Rights and the Bible"
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes. ~James Feibleman, Understanding Philosophy, 1973
I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings. Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels. ~Pearl S. Buck
An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?" ~Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
The faith that stands on authority is not faith. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. ~Edgar Allen Poe
On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position one hundred percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of conservatism. ~Barry Goldwater
People who rely most on God rely least on themselves. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays
God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning. ~Imamu Amiri Baraka
Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny. ~George Santayana
To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God. ~Victor Hugo
It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity. ~Abraham Lincoln, quoted in What Great Men Think Of Religion by Ira Cardiff
Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains.... But it can put mountains where there are none. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1879
The Bible is literature, not dogma. ~George Santayana
The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings. ~Garrett Hardin
The act of bellringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people. ~Ezra Pound
Take no alarm, dear reader, at the sound of the word Religion, for I have not the least idea of conducting you into some dark, subterranean cathedral where the air is oppressive and unnatural, but would lead you right out under heaven's sunny dome, where the joyous gospel of nature and inspiration are breathed into the soul....
This cosmical religion, broad as the world and reaching out to the infinite, as far transcends the man-made creeds that run counter to nature's laws, as the sky transcends all cathedrals that lift up their puny spires beneath it. I have aimed to lead my dear struggling human brothers and sisters into the vestibule of the Temple of Life where are joys forevermore, and where the radiant soul of things begins to appear.
~Edwin D. Babbitt, Religion as Revealed by the Material and Spiritual Universe, 1881
In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it. ~John Updike, A Month of Sundays, 1975
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. ~Mark Twain
In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination. ~Mark Twain
Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion. ~Robert Green Ingersoll
How can the Church be received as a trustworthy guide in the invisible, which falls into so many errors in the visible? ~John W. Draper
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. ~Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long
The Theologian is an owl, sitting on an old dead branch in the tree of human knowledge, and hooting the same old hoots that have been hooted for hundreds and thousands of years, but he has never given a hoot for progress. ~Emmet F. Fields
When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned. ~Robert Ingersoll, Some Reasons Why
Religions are like farts. Yours is good, but everyone else's stinks. ~Picket Fences
Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing "Does not!" ~Author Unknown
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. ~H.L. Mencken
If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment. ~Voltaire
God is innocent. Noah built in a flood plain. ~Author Unknown
To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. ~Ghose Aurobindo
Nowhere is there an account or portrait of Christ laughing... he is always stern, serious and as gloomy as a prison guard. Never does one see him laughing until tears appear in his eyes like the roly-poly squint-eyed Buddha guffawing with arms upraised. ~Author Unknown
The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature. ~Alfred North Whitehead
Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it. ~Søren Kierkegaard, Time, 1946 December 16th
Christian fundamentalism: the doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life. ~Andrew Lias
Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founders' than any other agency in the world. ~Richard Le Gallienne
