Interestingly,
neither (Bill) Gates nor (Warren) Buffett
seems
motivated by the possibility of being rewarded in heaven
for
his good deeds on earth. Gates told a Time interviewer,
"There's
a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning"
than
going to church. Put them together with Andrew Carnegie,
famous
for his freethinking, and three of the four greatest
American
philanthropists have been atheists or agnostics. (The
exception
is John D. Rockefeller.) In a country in which 96 percent
of
the population say they believe in a supreme being, that's a
striking
fact. It means that in one sense, Gates and Buffett
are
probably less self-interested in their charity than
someone
like Mother Teresa, who as a pious Roman Catholic
believed
in reward and punishment in the afterlife.
from
"On Giving" by Peter Singer
New
York Times Magazine/December 17, 2006
To
be an atheist you have to have 10,000 times
more
imagination than if you are a religious
fundamentalist.
You must take the responsibility
to
acquire information, digest and use it
to
understand what you can.
Peter
Greenaway
Prayer
is translation. A man translates himself
into
a child asking for all there is
in
a language he has barely mastered.
Leonard
Cohen
Religion
I found to be without any tendency
to
inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves
principally
to divide us & make us unfriendly
to
one another.
Benjamin
Franklin
I
contend that we are both atheists. I just believe
in
one fewer gods than you do. When you understand
why
you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you
will understand why I dismiss yours.
Stephen
F. Roberts
I
can understand why the pure of heart are
religious
people. If you believed that
there
was a fanlight in your mind, through which
an
old man with a beard was perpetually
peering,
taking down notes, you would think
twice
abouth throwing orgies in there.
David
Lodge
Man
is quite insane.
He
wouldn't know how to create a maggot,
yet
he creates gods by the dozen.
Michel
de Montaigne
All
gods are homemade,
and
it is we who pull their strings, and so,
give
them the power to pull ours.
Aldous
Huxley
Give
a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Give
a man a religion and he'll starve to death
while
praying for a fish.
Anonymous
God
made me an atheist.
Who
are you to question his wisdom?
Anonymous
I
find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy
my
spiritual needs. I think, for example, that
pi
is mysterious enough (don't get me started!) without
having
to worry about god. Or if pi isn't enough,
how
about fractals or quantum mechanics?
Tom
Lehrer
He
hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife.
Then
he realized there was a contradiction involved
here
and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
Douglas
Adams
The
fact that a believer is happier than a
skeptic
is no more to the point than the
fact
that a drunken man is happier
than
a
sober one.
George
Bernard Shaw
In
the Beginning, the universe was created.
This
has made a lot of people very angry and
has
been widely regarded as a bad move.
Douglas
Adams
On
going to war over religion:
You're
basically killing each other to see who's got
the
better imaginary friend.
Rich
Jeni
Oh
random fluctuations in the space time continuum!
atheist's
curse - Terry Pratchett
My
theology, briefly, is that the universe was
dictated
but not signed.
Christopher
Morley
The
more I study religions, the more I am convinced that
man
never worshipped anything but himself.
Sir
Richard F. Burton
To
you, I'm an atheist,
to
God I'm the loyal opposition.
Woody
Allen
There
is a theory that states that if ever anybody
discovers
exactly what the universe is for and why
it
is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced
by
something even more bizarre and inexplicable...
There
is another theory that states that this
has
already happened.
Douglas
Adams
With
or without religion, good people can
behave
well and bad people can do evil;
but
for good people to do evil -
that
takes religion.
Steven
Weinberg
The
trouble with born-again Christians is that they
are
an even bigger pain the second time around.
Herb
Caen
I
have too much respect for the idea of God to make
it
responsible for such an absurd world.
Georges
Duhamel
I
don't know if God exists, but it would be
better
for his reputation if he didn't.
Jules
Renard
I
am determined that my children shall be
brought
up
in their father's religion,
if
they can find out
what it is.
Charles
Lamb
Perhaps
I'm old and tired, but I always think that the
chances
of finding out what is really going on
are
so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is
to
say hang the sense of it and just
keep
yourself occupied.
Douglas
Adams
Science
has proof without any certainty. Creationists
have
certainty without any proof.
Ashley
Montague
I'm
still an atheist ... thank god!
Luis
Bunuel
There
is no god and Murphy is his prophet.
Unknown
And
for even more quotes,
go
here >
Back