All Quotes

"Your petitioners are Atheists and they define their beliefs as follows. An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of god. An Atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now—here on earth for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist believes that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction, and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it, and enjoy it. An Atheist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment. He seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god. An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated."

"He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike him)."

"Athéisme, force de l'esprit, mais jusq'à un certain degré seulement."

"Objection des athées: "Mais nous n'avons nulle lumière.""

"No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved and sustained by the Spirit of the universe."

"On second thought, maybe the atheist cannot find God, for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman."

"He who tries to flee from God takes refuge in himself."

"By definition, that is, by its very stance, atheism denies or ignores the creatureliness and thus also the provisionality [Entwurfscharakter] of the world and man — with the consequence that atheists must explain man's moral failure as, at most, inappropriate behavior, or perhaps as an error of judgment, or, even more tepidly, as an inability to adapt to society."

"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward then, brother, that person is a piece of shit. And I’d like to get as many of them out in the open as possible. You gotta get together and tell yourself stories that violate every law of the universe just to get through the goddamn day? What’s that say about your reality?"

"You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters... Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction."

"If religion has no intrinsic content and value, and is only a fraud, then its interest to scholarship should be marginal. Yet research institutes publishing houses, journals and thousands of PhDs and other scholars are engagd in nothing other than a systematic lifetime study of religion and its refutation. But if millions of roubles and man-hours of Soviet scholars are spent on the study of religion, then the subject is worthy of scholarly pursuit, and must be in itself a scholarly discipline, not simply a fraud or opiate. In other words, its study required an objective, open-ended approach. Yet Soviet scholars are oblidged to approach the suject with a predetermined conclusion: whatever they discover about religion and the believers, their conclusion must be negative, it must lead to only one single definition of religion, namely that it is a fraud and a delusion. In these circumstances all Soviet atheistic scholarship becomes nothing but support for the main thesis. This obligatory thesis, the condemnation of religion as fraud and believers as vicctims of fraud perpetuated by a clergy who are either clever swindlers or fools, has to be made in such a way as to appear as fresh and new as possible."

"A textbook, Foundation of Scientific Atheism, defined atheism as: 'a system of materialistic scientifically based views, rejecting any faith in god (or gods), in supernatural powers and any religion whatsoever...Atheism...is one of the essential and most important aspects of materialistic philosophy.' Religion in the same book is described as 'a form of social consciousness... a perverse, fantastic reflection of reality in the consciousness of men'. This, of course, is straight out of Engels. All religious philosophy is described as a class philosophy. Hence Plato, for instance, is said to 'represent the interest of the slave-owning aristocracy'. But then it has to be shown that atheism, has always been a major school of thought wherefore moralists, such as Lao-Tse, and pantheists, such as Spinoza are presented, or rather misrepresented, as atheists."

"Atheists put on a false courage and alacrity in the midst of their darkness and apprehensions, like children who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing for fear."

"The most dangerous and unacceptable form of atheism is not to claim that God does not exist, but to believe oneself to be God. The atheism of Stalin or Mao is child's play compared to the atheism of Bush or Bin Laden, who have installed themselves as gods and speak in his name."

"God can stand being told by Professor Ayer and Marghanita Laski that He does not exist."

"Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun."

"And when you said: O Moses, we will not believe in thee till we see God directly, so the punishment overtook you while you looked on. Then We raised you up after your stupor that you might give thanks."

"And certainly We have made clear for men in this Qur'an every kind of description, but most men consent to naught save denying. And they say: We will by no means believe in thee, till thou cause a spring to gush forth from the earth for us, Or thou have a garden of palms and grapes in the midst of which thou cause rivers to flow forth abundantly, Or thou cause the heaven to come down upon us in pieces, as thou thinkest, or bring Allah and the angels face to face (with us), Or thou have a house of gold, or thou ascend into heaven. And we will not believe in thy ascending till thou bring down to us a book we can read. Say: Glory to my Lord am I aught but a mortal messenger? And nothing prevents people from believing, when the guidance comes to them, except that they say: Has Allah raised up a mortal to be a messenger? Say: Had there been in the earth angels walking about secure, We would have sent down to them from the heaven an angel as messenger. Say: Allah suffices for a witness between me and you. Surely He is ever Aware of His servants, Seeing. And he whom Allah guides, he is on the right way; and he whom He leaves in error, for them thou wilt find no guardians besides Him. And We shall gather them together on the day of Resurrection on their faces, blind and dumb and deaf. Their abode is hell. Whenever it abates, We make them burn the more. This is their retribution because they disbelieve in Our messages and say: When we are bones and decayed particles, shall we then be raised up into a new creation? See they not that Allah, Who created the heavens and the earth, is able to create the like of them? And He has appointed for them a term, whereof there is no doubt. But the wrongdoers consent to naught but denying."

"Are they created from void matter? are they The Creators? are they who creating the Heavens and Earth? actually, they are baselessly trusting."

"I am an intransigent atheist, though not a militant one. This means that I am not fighting against religion — I am fighting for reason."

"There is no 'law' in heaven or earth that man must needs obey! Take what you can, and all you can; and take it while you – may. Let not the Jew-born Christ ideal unnerve you from the fight. You have no 'rights' except the rights you win by – might. There is no justice, right, nor wrong; no truth, no good, no evil. There is no 'man's immortal soul,' no fiery, fearsome devil. There is no 'heaven of glory:' No! – no 'hell where sinners roast.' There is no 'God the Father,' No! – no Son, no 'Holy Ghost.' The world is no Nirvāna where joy forever flows. It is a grewsome butcher shop where dead 'lambs' hang in rows. Man is the most ferocious of all the beasts of prey. He rageth round the mountains, to love, and feast, and – slay. He sails the stormy oceans, he gallops o'er the plains, and sucks the very marrow-bones of captives held in – chains. Death endeth all for every man, – for every 'son of thunder;' Then be a lion (not a 'lamb') and – don't be trampled under."

"Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same."

"I contend 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."

"Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a Great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular. The people, the unfortunate, will always applaud me; I shall find detractors only among the rich and the guilty."

"In this actual world a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoff at or ignore their religious needs, is a community on the rapid down grade. It is true that occasional individuals or families may have nothing to do with church or with religious practices and observances and yet maintain the highest standard of refined ethical obligation. But this does not affect the case in the world as it now is, any more than the fact that exceptional men and women under exceptional conditions have disregarded the marriage tie without moral harm to themselves interferes with the larger fact that such disregard if at all common means the complete moral disintegration of the body politic"

"The ultimate source of our civilization's disease is the spiritual and religious crisis which has overtaken all of us and which each must master for himself. Above all, man is Homo religiosus, and yet we have, for the past century, made the desperate attempt to get along without God, and in the place of God we have set up the cult of man, his profane or even ungodly science and art, his technical achievements, and his State. We may be certain that some day the whole world will come to see, in a blinding flash, what is now clear to only a few, namely, that this desperate attempt has created a situation in which man can have no spiritual and moral life, and this means that he cannot live at all for any length of time, in spite of television and speedways and holiday trips and comfortable apartments. We seem to have proved the existence of God in yet another way: by the practical consequences of His assumed non-existence."

"I'm not an atheist because I just can't be that certain."

"Stripped of the opportunities for satire which organised religion cannot help but supply, the case for atheism has very little substance."

"Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead?"

"Atheism is an old idea, probably as old as humanity, and it has always justified its case by its superior understanding of nature. Unfortunately, as scientific knowledge has become more sophisticated over the past three centuries, all the scientific ideas which support atheism have evaporated into murky puddles of water, when they have not actually dried up entirely. It is now clear that the Universe has not always been here, it has a beginning. Everything is not made of indestructible atoms. Life is not caused by sunlight on dungheaps, and so on."

"I have concluded, through careful empirical analysis and much thought, that somebody is looking out for me, keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less than I ought, giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I'm capable of. I believe they know everything that I do and think and they still love me, and I have concluded after careful consideration, that this person keeping score is me."

"You don't have to believe in atheism, because atheism is based on REASON."

"Nee, ich trinke keinen Tee, ich bin Atheist."

"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 of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life."

""The reality of God is dead." Here we come to an important point. These are real atheists who say that. This kind of atheism is not born of the intellect. It is born of the will. They will that God does not exist."

"There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

"Atheists in foxholes, some say they are myths, Creations of the mind who just don't exist. Yet, they answered the call to defend, with great pride. With reason their watchword, they bled and they died."

"Nationwide, the nonreligious population is both the fastest growing, and the most despised. I ask you all, why is that? Why are we hated, when we endorse no violence, incite no racism or hatred, and demand nothing more than equal treatment? I'll tell you why: It's easy to hate what you don't know, and the theists don't know us. Well, actually, they do know us, but they don't know they know us, because most atheists in this country are closeted. Bigotry is born of ignorance, but ignorance can be cured. If the atheists weren't closeted, it would be harder to hate us, because in the end, you can't hate what you already love."

"What Jupiter? Do not trifle. There is no Jupiter."

"The centralized atheism before whose armed might the whole world trembles still hates and fears this unarmed faith as much today as it did 60 years ago. Yes! All the savage persecutions loosed upon our people by a murderous state atheism, coupled with the corroding effect of its lies, and an avalanche of stultifying propaganda — all of these together have proven weaker than the thousand-year-old faith of our nation. This faith has not been destroyed; it remains the most sublime, the most cherished gift to which our lives and consciousness can attain."

"More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”"

"Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the “pursuit of happiness, “a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short-lived value. It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system. Yet it is not considered shameful to make daily concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the continuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our very own generation, the West is ineluctably slipping toward the abyss. Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism."

"In the first place, it is clear that by self-existence we especially mean, an existence independent of any other — not produced by any other: the assertion of self-existence is simply an indirect denial of creation.... Self-existence, therefore, necessarily means existence without a beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort can we do this.... To this let us add, that even were self-existence conceivable, it would not in any sense be an explanation of the Universe.... Thus the Atheistic theory is not only absolutely unthinkable, but, even if it were thinkable, would not be a solution. The assertion that the Universe is self-existent does not really carry us a step beyond the cognition of its present existence; and so leaves us with a mere restatement of the mystery."

"For entirely savage races,... one cannot count them among either the atheists or the theists. Asking them their belief would be like asking them if they are for Aristotle or Democritus: they know nothing; they are not atheists any more than they are Peripatetics."

"Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent persons, and superstition is the vice of fools."

"The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who, not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypotheses of the eternity of things and of inevitability."

"As was proved at the outset of the argument, self-existence is rigorously inconceivable; and this holds true whatever be the nature of the object of which it is predicated.... Thus these three different suppositions [atheism, pantheism, theism] respecting the origin of things, verbally intelligible though they are, and severally seeming to their respective adherents quite rational, turn out, when critically examined to be literally unthinkable. It is not a question of probability, or credibility, but of conceivability. Experiment proves that the elements of these hypotheses cannot even be put together in consciousness; and we can entertain them only as we entertain such pseud-ideas as a square fluid and a moral substance — only by abstaining from the endeavour to render them into actual thoughts. Or, reverting to our original mode of statement, we may say that they severally involve symbolic conceptions of the illegitimate and illusive kind. Differing so widely as they seem to do, the atheistic, the pantheistic, and the theistic hypotheses contain the same ultimate element. It is impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence somewhere; and whether that assumption be made nakedly, or under complicated disguises, it is equally vicious, equally unthinkable."

"Passing over the consideration of credibility, and confining ourselves to that of conceivability, we see that Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism, when rigorously analyzed, severally prove to be absolutely unthinkable."

"Leaving out the accompanying moral code, which is in all cases a supplementary growth, a religious creed is definable as a theory of original causation.... [E]ven that which is commonly regarded as the negation of all Religion — even positive Atheism, comes within the definition; for it, too, in asserting the self-existence of Space, Matter, and Motion, which it regards as adequate causes of every appearance, propounds an à priori theory from which it holds the facts to be deducible."

"You know, they are fooling us, there is no God."