Quotations

We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out. -- Adolph Hitler

“I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true.... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque.”  -- Christopher Hitchens

“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.” -- Hypatia of Alexandria (370 - 415 BC)

"Believing is easier than thinking. Hence so many more believers than thinkers." ~Bruce Calvert

 "There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably, some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he does not dare face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not real, he becomes furious when they are disputed."--Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics

 “I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. ”-- Isaac Asimov

If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia
Reality must prove itself again and again to questioners ... it is the fantasy which goes on without contradiction, without having to prove itself.--Samuel R. Delany, The Fall of the Towers

Reality has always proved to be much more sophisticated and subtle than any preconceived philosophy.--Michio Kaku, Hyperspace

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.
--Madalyn Murray O'Hair 

If this is your God, he's not very impressive. He's got so many psychological problems; he's so insecure. He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes. He's a pretty poor excuse for a supreme being.
-Captain James T. Kirk; Star Trek: The God Thing

A god whose creation is so imperfect that he must be continually adjusting it to make it work properly seems to me a god of relatively low order, hardly worthy of any worship.
- Martin Gardner

"Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."
- Thomas Jefferson

"All priests dread the advance of science. They preach bigotry and fanaticism at the expense of human reason. A band of dupes and imposters, they sponser ignorance, absurdity,untruth,charlatanism, and falsification."
-Thomas Jefferson

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix Reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
-Thomas Jefferson


To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10, 000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
-Unknown

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-C.S. Lewis

"History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help." But like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it."
- Lazurus Long

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent---it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.
- Lazurus Long

 "Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves."  "Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."
- Lazurus Long

 "The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?"
- Epicurus

"For all we know, all the main religions could be utterly wrong, and some minor deity from the bushlands of Africa could be the big cheese in the afterlife!" 
- Jubal Harshaw

 "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
- Blaise Pascal

"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."
 - H. L. Mencken

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."
- 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."
- H. L. Mencken