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(In no particular order.)
An unfounded belief can best be defined as a belief about which it is maintained that verification or justification is not an issue, such things are criteria that should not be applied to it. Religion is the science of creating unfounded beliefs, making beliefs a matter of faith, superstition, sophistry, simple denial of facts and unreasoning emotion. Religion teaches that some things are true for no other reason than you want them to be true, or you'd like them to be true, or you feel them to be true. -- Jason Stokes
Our scientists can see stars that have been dead for a billion years; they can document microscopic bacteria that concluded their brief lives on earth eons ago. But of God we have no trace, except for the testimony of scribes writing of events neither they nor those around them ever witnessed--and the faith of millions of people who have managed to convince themselves that he lives and reigns somewhere in the sky. -- Steven Chapman, Chicago Tribune columnist, in Slate
I think it's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything. Man lived on the planet -- [placing his fingers an inch apart], this is 5000 years of semi-recorded history. And God and the Bible, that came in somewhere around the middle, maybe 2000. This is the last 2000, this is what we're about to celebrate [indicating about an 1/8th of an inch with his fingers]. Now, humans, in some shape or form, have been on the earth for three million years [pointing across the room to indicate the distance]. So, all this time, from there [gesturing toward the other side of the room], to here [indicating the 1/8th of an inch], there was no God, there was no story, there was no myth and people lived on this planet and they wandered and they gathered and they did all these things. The planet was never threatened. How did they survive for all this time without this belief in God? I'd like to ask this to someone who knows about Christianity and maybe you do. That just seems funny to me. -- Eddie Vedder, lead singer & lyricist of Pearl Jam, on his feelings about God.
There is nothing wrong with extolling students to observe such precepts as "don't kill" and "don't steal." Schools do that all the time. Only the stuff in the commandments about observing the Sabbath and not worshipping other Gods is off-limits. It's possible to promote morality without evangelizing for religion, just as it's possible to evangelize for religion without promoting morality. -- Steven Chapman, Chicago Tribune columnist, in "Fails Again: Quayle trips when he takes on role of school disciplinarian," Chicago Tribune, 5/30/99
We all live within the contexts of our assumptions. We can't really know what we don't know or all of the things that we assume. However, to practice a religeon, to adopt a faith, one must accept belief in a fixed world view...willingly give up objectivity. The very fact that people who are equally well informed, equally well intentioned, equally intelligent, hold mutually exclusive beliefs with equal degrees of faith, demonstrates that religeous belief is suspect, from a purely objective context. It's possible for anyone to apply scientific method. I suppose that it's possible to develop science while keeping one's personal biases separate, but I doubt that humans can do it. Einstein was one of the greatest and most productive scientists that humanity has produced, and even he was known to use his interpretation of God's aesthetics to argue physical law, "God does not play dice with the universe." Of course, he was wrong. I think we'd do well to remember that the people who wrote the bible thought the earth was flat. -- Michael McGinnis, from a ScienceFriday.com feedback page
...patriarchal religions are always politically reactionary. They prevent the elimination of the prevailing mass misery by claiming it to be the will of God and by referring demands for happiness to the hereafter. -- Wilhelm Reich, German atheist
Doubt everything. Find your own light. -- Last words of Gotama Buddha, in Theravada tradition
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things. -- Hippocrates
God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, he is weak -- and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful -- which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them? -- Epicurus (from "The Epicurus Reader", translated and edited by Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson, Hackett Publishing, 1994, p. 97)
Nature free at once and rid of her haughty lords is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods. -- Lucretius
We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free. -- Epictetus (Discourses)
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom. -- Latin proverb
Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of a new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument. -- Francis Bacon
I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use. -- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal (Pensees, 1670)
Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles, and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that once ignorance is put aside that wonderment would be taken away which is the only means by which their authority is preserved. -- Spinoza
There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. -- George Washington (address to Congress, 8 January, 1790)
Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principles that they are laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument. -- Ethan Allen
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. -- Thomas Jefferson, (letter to Rev. James Madison, July 19, 1788)
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it. -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Archibald Stuart, Dec. 23, 1791, on the encroachments of state governments)
I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! -- John Adams (letter to Thomas Jefferson)
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. -- Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
If you accept the literal truth of every word of the Bible, then the Earth must be flat. The same is true for the Qu'ran. Pronouncing the Earth round then means you're an atheist. In 1993, the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, issued an edict, or fatwa, declaring that the world is flat. Anyone of the round persuasion does not believe in God and should be punished. -- Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World," p. 325
You will do me the justice to remember that I have always supported the right of every man to his opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right makes a slave of himself to present opinion because he precludes himself the right of changing it. The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall. -- Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
The fundamentalist teaching that science is "humanism" and is to be mistrusted is the reason nobody understands science. Religions are afraid of the skeptical thinking at the heart of science. Students are brainwashed not to accept scientific thinking long before they get to college. -- letter received by Carl Sagan in response to an article on education
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. -- Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. -- Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not. -- James Madison (from Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, 1785)
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church. -- Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. -- James Madison (from Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, 1785)
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. -- John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1859)
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. -- Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President [1861-1865]. From Henry O. Dormann, compiler, The Speaker's Book of Quotations, New York: Ballantine Books, 1987, p. 127.)
I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes--a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slave holders find the strongest protection. Where I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me... I... hate the corrupt, slave holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. -- Frederick Douglass (After the Escape)
For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs -- as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions. -- Charles Darwin (The Descent of Man, 1871)
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous -- if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men. -- Robert Ingersoll (The Ghosts)
For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said "Think." The many have said "Believe!" -- Robert Ingersoll (Gods)
My only wish is... to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are "half animal, half angel" into persons, into whole persons. -- Ludwig Feuerbach (Lectures on the Essence of Religion)
Where knowledge ends, religion begins. -- Benjamin Disraeli
Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. -- Mark Twain
The greatest progress that the human race has made lies in learning how to make correct inferences. -- Nietzsche (Human, All-Too Human)
The bible teaches that women brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period [of] suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man's bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire... Here is the Bible position of woman briefly summed up. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
If all people learned to think in the non-Aristotelian manner of quantum mechanics, the world would change so radically that most of what we call "stupidity" and even a great deal of what we consider "insanity" might disappear, and the "intractable" problems of war, poverty and injustice would suddenly seem a great deal closer to solution. -- Alfred Korzybski
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of woman's emancipation. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality. -- Clarence Darrow, 1938
No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept. -- Henry George
The foundation of morality is to... give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge. -- Thomas Henry Huxley
One of the greatest tragedies in human history was the hijacking of morality by religion. -- Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless. -- Leo Tolstoy (On Life and Essays on Religion)
The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. -- Mohandas Gandhi (Young India, 1927)
Religion is a disease. It is born of fear; it compensates through hate in the guise of authority, revelation. Religion, enthroned in a powerful social organization, can become incredibly sadistic. No religion has been more cruel than the Christian. -- Dr. George A. Dorsey
It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. -- Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1950
The twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man. -- Clinton Rossiter, American historian
Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion. -- Justice Black describing the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment
Belief is an obsolete Aristotelian category. -- Dr. Jack Sarfatti, physicist
There is no Energy Shortage. There is no Energy Crisis. There is a Crisis of Ignorance. -- R. Buckminster Fuller
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. -- Albert Einstein
The Christian religion has been and still is the principle enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. -- Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." -- Richard Feynman (The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1)
A credulous mind...finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasable, for every man can believe such. -- Samuel Butler, "Characters" (1667-9)
[M]agic, it must be remembered, is an art which demands collaboration between the artist and his public. -- E. M. Butler, "The Myth of the Magus" (1948), on the willingness to believe.
Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method. -- Richard Feynman (The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1)
To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages of both the Old and New Testament. -- William Blackstone, jurist, "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (1765)
Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. -- Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason"
A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood... How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all! -- Richard Feynman (The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1)
Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion. -- Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan" (1651)
Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death. -- Polybius, Roman historian
People may come along and argue philosophically that they like one better than another; but we have learned from much experience that all philosophical intuitions about what nature is going to do fail. -- Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law)
Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvelous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified. -- Thomas Henry Huxley
[I]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge; it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. -- Charles Darwin, Introduction, "The Descent of Man" (1871)
If you thought before that science was certain -- well, that is just an error on your part. -- Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law)
We receive as friendly that which agrees with [us], we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense. -- British physicist Michael Faraday
Can you join me in praying that God will burn down the Planned Parenthood in Des Moines in a manner no one can mistake for any human torching, which impartial observers will have to attribute to miraculous (unexplainable) causes, and which Christians will have to attribute to the Hand of God? -- actual request printed in "The Prayer and Action Weekly News" (1994)
If science is to progress, what we need is the ability to experiment, honestly in reporting the results -- the results must be reported without somebody saying what they would like the results to have been -- and finally -- an important thing -- the intelligence to interpret the results. An important point about this intelligence is that it should not be sure ahead of time what must be. It cannot be prejudiced, and say "That is very unlikely; I don't like that." -- Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law)
Not only in peasant homes, but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside the twentieth century the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic powers of signs and exorcisms.... Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustable reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery! -- Leon Trotsky
Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth. -- Bertrand Russell, "Mysticism and Logic" (1929)
It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is -- if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it. -- Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law)
It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it. -- Edmund Way Teale, "Circle of Seasons" (1950)
We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free. -- Epictetus, a Roman philosopher & former slave, in "Discourses"
Although it is uncertain, it is necessary to make science useful. Science is only useful if it tells you about some experiment that has not been done; it is not good if it only tells you what just went on. -- Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law)
In the revolution of ten centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea had been added to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation. -- historian Edward Gibbon, describing Europe in the middle ages
I thank God there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have [them] these [next] hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both! -- British Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, 1671
If you can find any other view of the world which agrees over the entire range where things have already been observed, but disagrees somewhere else, you have made a great discovery. -- Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law)
All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike--and yet it is all we have. -- Albert Einstein
We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling. -- Henri Poincaré
It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations. -- Richard Feynman ("What Do You Care What Other People Think?")
We wait for light, but behold darkness. -- Isaiah 59:9
There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. -- George Washington, address to Congress, Jan. 8, 1790
Science is of value because it can produce something. -- Richard Feynman on "The Value of Science" ("What Do You Care What Other People Think?")
It is properly said that the Devil can "quote Scripture to his purpose." The Bible is full of so many stories of contradictory moral purpose that every generation can find scriptural justification for nearly any action it proposes--from incest, slavery, and mass murder to the most refined love, courage, and self-sacrifice. And this moral multiple personality disorder is hardly restricted to Judaism and Christianity. -- Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World" (p. 290-1)
You dispute, you quarrel, you fight for that which is uncertain, that of which you doubt. O men! Is this not folly? .... We must trace a line of distinction between those that are capable of verification, and those that are not, and separate by an inviolable barrier the world of fantastical beings from the world of realitites; that is to say, all civil effect must be taken away from theological and religious opinions. -- French historian & philosopher C. F. Volney, "Ruins" (1791)
I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here.... I don't have to know the answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me. -- Richard Feynman (interview with Christopher Sykes, in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out," BBC-TV, 1981
... consider the mainstream religions. We are enjoined in Micah to do justly and love mercy; in Exodus we are forbidden to commit murder; in Leviticus we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves; and in the Gospels we are urged to love our enemies. Yet think of the rivers of blood spilled by fervent followers of the books in which these well-meaning exhortations are embedded. -- Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted Worlld" (p. 290)
Many a man hath verily believed he hath seen a spirit externally before him, when it hath been only an internal image dancing in his own brain. -- Bishop Francis Hutchinson, "Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft" (1718)
Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of peoples by the mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships. -- Andrei Sakharov, 1968
Let a wave of intolerance wash over you.... Yes, hate is good.... Our goal is a Christian nation.... We are called by God to conquer this country.... We don't want pluralism. -- Randal Terry, founder of "Operation Rescue", Aug. 1993
Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce. -- Walter Savage Landor
The twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most significant contribution to the freeing of Western man. -- Clinton Rossiter, "Seedtime of the Republic" (1953)
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. -- 1 Corinthians 1:19
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. -- Albert Einstein
Man is a dog's idea of what God should be. -- Holbrook Jackson
There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. -- Albert Einstein, "The World As I See It," 1949, pp. 28-29
The world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence. -- Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri (Syrian poet, 973-1057)
My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment. -- Letter from Albert Einstein to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; from Einstein Archive 59-215
Man is a god in ruins. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him. -- Letter from Albert Einstein to colleague Edgar Meyer, Jan. 2, 1915
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life. -- Aristotle
...an attempt to find an out where there is no door. -- Einstein's description of conventional religious thought, from "Einstein: The Life and Times", by Ronald W. Clark
... atheism has been, and indeed continues to be, a form of social and political protest, directed as much against institutional religion as against theistic doctrine. Atheism has been, in effect, a moral revulsion against the undoubted abuses of secular power exercised by religious leaders and religious institutions. -- Ernest Nagel
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. -- Albert Einstein in "Albert Einsteinn: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman
Everybody who has undertaken in the last 300 years to stand against the growth of scientific knowledge has lost. -- Paul Gross, biologist
I have tried to respond to your question as simply as I could. Here is my answer. Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being. -- Einstein's response to a sixth-grader's question of whether scientists pray to god, from "Albert Einstein -- The Human Side", Selected and Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman
Ironically, today many modern conservatives fervently agree with Karl Marx that religion is "the opium of the people"; they add a heartfelt, "Thank God!" -- Ronald Bailey, "Origin of the Specious: Why do neoconservatives doubt Darwin?", Reason magazine, July 1997
Religion is all bunk. -- Thomas Edison
I don't believe in God, because I don't believe in Mother Goose. -- Clarence Darrow
It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain. -- Mark Twain
Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, He must approve the homage of Reason rather than that of blindfolded Fear. -- Thomas Jefferson
Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot therefore be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in error. -- Robert Owen
Why has a religious turn of mind always a tendency to narrow and harden the heart? -- Robert Burns
It's an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations with all their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous. -- Gloria Steinem
The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. -- David Hume
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. -- Bertrand Russell
It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses. -- Flo Kennedy
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. -- Albert Einstein
Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, canot be a true system. -- Thomas Paine
One of my favorite fantasies is that next Sunday not one single woman, in any country of the world, will go to church. If women simply stop giving our time and energy to the institutions that oppress, they could cease to be. -- Sonia Johnson
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. -- Benjamin Franklin
Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separated. -- Ulysses S. Grant
Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. -- Thomas Paine
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. -- Thomas Jefferson
I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. -- Charles Darwin
One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
If the bible had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe it. -- William Jennings Bryan
Reason should be destroyed in all Christians. -- Martin Luther
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. -- Jesus, Matthew 10:34
The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason. -- Mary Wollstonecraft
Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give. -- Robert Ingersoll
The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known. -- John Stuart Mill
If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgement on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him? -- Albert Einstein, "Out of My Later YYears"
Jesus is particularly stimulating to me, since he noticed what I can't help noticing, that life is so hard most people are losers or feel like losers, so that a skill essential to most of us, if we are to retain some shred of dignity, is to show grace in defeat.... What I can't stand are sermons which say that to believe in the divinity of Jesus is a way to win. -- Kurt Vonnegut, in a letter to the Dean of Chapel at Transylvania University
It's not the parts of the bible I don't understand that scare me but the parts I do understand. -- Mark Twain
Nothing works like prayer! Corollary: Prayer works like nothing! Exactly like it! -- nemo0037@yahoo.spamDIE.com ("Nemo")
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. -- Isaiah 45:7
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. -- from a .sig by anrwlias@hotmail.com
In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him. And Man gave unto God a multitude of names, that he might be Lord over all the earth when it was suited to Man. And on the seven millionth day Man rested and did lean heavily on his God and saw that it was good. And Man became the God that he had created and with his miracles did rule over all the earth. -- Excerpts from the back cover of the Jethro Tull album "Aqualung"
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. -- David Hume
It seems endemic among human beings to take some secret pleasure in the fact that those not like us end up suffering while we and those like us not only escape suffering but in fact are rewarded. -- Austin Cline, on the concept of an afterlife
Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy. -- Salman Rushdie, "Satanic Verses"
I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem - the most important of all human problems. -- Albert Einstein
In matters of faith and hope people will always disagree. -- John Murray
Love of truth gives power for it secures a growing knowledge of truth. -- William Ellery Channing
The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and science lies in the concept of a personal god. -- Albert Einstein
There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith. -- William E. H. Lecky, Irish Historian
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. Delos B. McKown, Ph.D., U.S. Professor, Philosopher and former clergyman
I shave with Ockham's Razor every morning. -- lazarus33@earthlink.net
...I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. -- Stephen F. Roberts
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion. -- Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate physicist
I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem -- the most important of all human problems. -- Albert Einstein
...I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to him on Oct. 26 about the harm done by religion and wrote, "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")
Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. -- Dan Barker
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