153 Atheist Quotes by Famous Persons

This is a long list of quotes by Einstein, Voltaire, Nietzsche and many others supporting the argument for Atheism.

God's only excuse is that He does not exist. – Stendhal There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and at the same time, all-powerful being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be. – Arthur Schopenhauer There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God. – Primo Levi, Auschwitz survivor God, equally with gods, angels, demons, spirits, and other small spiritual fry, is a human product, arising inevitably from a certain kind of ignorance and a certain degree of helplessness with respect to man's external environment. – Julian Huxley The death of a child is the greatest reason to doubt the existence of God. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky There can be no Creator, simply because his grief at the fate of his creation would be inconceivable and unendurable. – Elias Canetti It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world. – Simone de Beauvoir If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. – Mikhail Bakunin If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong. – Francis Crick The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. – William Shakespeare Most sermons sound to me like commercials-but I can’t make out whether god is the sponser or the product. – Mignon McLaughlin All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. – Lucretius Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty. – Emma Goldman There was a time when religion ruled the world. It was known as the Dark Ages. – Ruth Hurmence Green If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes. – Ralph Waldo Emerson A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams. – Umberto Eco Religion, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort to deny the most obvious realities. – H. L. Mencken Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage. – H. L. Mencken Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity? – Arthur C. Clarke The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history. – Noam Chomsky Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world. – John Burroughs Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them. – Peter Ustinov I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. – Bertrand Russell And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence. – Bertrand Russell So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. – Bertrand Russell Who needs Satan when you have a God like this? – Robert M. Price I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. – Thomas Paine …the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any. – Thomas Paine The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma. – Abraham Lincoln Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing. – Maynard James Keenan 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 What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of “humility.” This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. – Albert Einstein It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. … Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. – Albert Einstein If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. – Albert Einstein Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. – Richard Dawkins I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. – Richard Dawkins We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. – Richard Dawkins Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. – Richard Dawkins The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. – Richard Dawkins Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. – Napoleon Bonaparte Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don’t need. – Bill Maher I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. – Bill Maher The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. – Eric Hoffer If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle. – Dave Barry Where knowledge ends, religion begins. – Benjamin Disraeli The foolish reject what they see and not what they think; the wise reject what they think and not what they see. – Huang Po You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend. – Richard Jeni Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions. – Blaise Pascal Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay. – Jiddu Krishnamurti The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. – Jiddu Krishnamurti We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There’s not much personal about the laws of physics. – Stephen Hawking Black holes would seem to suggest that God not only plays dice, but also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. – Stephen Hawking If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor. – Voltaire Of all religions the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. – Voltaire Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities. – Voltaire Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. – Benjamin Franklin The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason. – Benjamin Franklin The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your Candle. – Benjamin Franklin Shake off all 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 We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society. – Thomas Jefferson The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus…will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. – Thomas Jefferson The most henious and the must cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. – Mohandas Gandhi I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. – Mohandas Gandhi 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. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. – George Bernard Shaw If there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god? Therefore there are no gods. – Friedrich Nietzsche Faith means not wanting to know what is true. – Friedrich Nietzsche Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. – Friedrich Nietzsche Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s? – Friedrich Nietzsche In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. – Friedrich Nietzsche I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. – Frank Lloyd Wright We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. – Gene Roddenberry To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. – Isaac Asimov Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived. – Isaac Asimov If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. – Isaac Asimov A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. – Mark Twain It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. – Mark Twain I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. – Mark Twain Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. – Seneca the Younger How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter? – Woody Allen Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. – Woody Allen If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever. – Woody Allen Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination. – Edward Abbey With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. – Steven Weinberg They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to religious belief and it’s a good thing. – Steven Weinberg I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence. – Doug McLeod The world holds two classes of men – intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence. – Abu’l-Ala al Ma'arri I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. – Susan B. Anthony The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. – Delos B. McKown Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. – Francis Bacon A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect. he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified. – Karen Armstrong It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image. – Ludwig Feuerbach If I thought the Jews killed God, I’d worship the Jews. – Bill Hicks People ask me what I think about that woman priest thing. What, a woman priest? Women priests. Great, great. Now there’s priests of both sexes I don’t listen to. – Bill Hicks All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science. – Matthew Arnold What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. – Christopher Hitchens It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible. – George W. Foote 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 Roberts You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate. – Richard A. Weatherwax What’s “God”? Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God’s the guy that ignores you. – Steve Buscemi (From the movie “The Island”) As far as I can tell from studying the scriptures, all you do in heaven is pretty much just sit around all day and praise the Lord. I don’t know about you, but I think that after the first, oh, I don’t know, 50,000,000 years of that I’d start to get a little bored. – Rick Reynolds Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color. – Don Hirschberg God should be executed for crimes against humanity. – Bryan Emmanuel Gutierrez To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I wouldn’t be wrong to ask. – Geoff Mather Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? – Epicurus I’m a polyatheist – there are many gods I don’t believe in. – Dan Fouts A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if nobody believes it. – David Stevens 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 A Heinlein I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing. – Douglas Adams Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? – Douglas Adams People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.) – Douglas Adams I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously. – Douglas Adams He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave. – William Drummond There’s a phrase we live by in America: “In God We Trust”. It’s right there where Jesus would want it: on our money. – Steven Colbert Remember, Jesus would rather constantly shame gays than let orphans have a family. – Steven Colbert Religion does three things quite effectively: Divides people, Controls people, Deludes people. – Carlespie Mary Alice McKinney Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. – Sigmund Freud When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life. – Sigmund Freud Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains. – Robert G. Ingersoll The inspiration of the bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it. – Robert G. Ingersoll A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing. – Robert G. Ingersoll Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. – Robert G. Ingersoll History teaches us that no other cause has brought more death than the word of god. – Giulian Buzila Atheism is a non-prophet organization. – George Carlin Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money. – George Carlin 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 “There are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t an argument against atheism, it’s an argument against foxholes. – James Morrow An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. – John Buchan Gods dont kill people. People with Gods kill people. – David Viaene If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself. – Alexandre Dumas Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. – Sam Harris If we expect God to subscribe to one religion at the exclusion of all the others, then we should expect damnation as a matter of chance. This should give Christians pause when expounding their religious beliefs, but it does not. – Sam Harris I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose. – Clarence Darrow No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism. – Annie Wood Besant I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to hell if I’m ‘bad’. – Mike Fuhrman Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions. – Frater Ravus Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have. – Penn Jillette Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. – Chapman Cohen When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion. – Robert Pirsig I wonder who got the shit job of scouring the planet for the 15000 species of butterfly or the 8800 species of ant they eventually took on board Noah’s Ark. But at least we got that magical rainbow for all their trouble. – Azura Skye Man has always required an explanation for all of those things in the world he did not understand. If an explanation was not available, he created one. – Jim Crawford What has been [Christianity’s] fruits? Superstition, Bigotry and Persecution. – James Madison The characters and events depicted in the damn bible are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. – Penn and Teller If god is the alpha and the omega. The begining and the end, knows what has passed and what is to come, like it states in the bible, why do people pray and think it will make any difference. – Mark Fairclough Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand. – Karl Marx Religion is the opiate of the masses. – Karl Marx Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. – Karl Marx If God created the world, then who created god? and who created whoever created god? So somewhere along the line something had to just be there. So why can’t we just skip the idea of god and go straight to earth? – Ryan Hanson Animals do not have gods, they are smarter than that. – Ronnie Snow I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever. – Daniel Boorstin I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk. – Thomas Edison Fundamentalism, of any type, due to its prerequisite lack of intelligent thought, could prove to be the worst weapon of mass destruction, of all. – David J. Constable To really be free, You need to be free in the mind. – Alexander Loutsis Today’s religion will be the future’s mythology. Both believed at one time by many; but proved wrong by the clever. – Steven Crocker

6/11/2020 - 06:22

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