All Quotes

"We had many interesting conversations and he introduced me to his young wife. He confided to me that he had married her because she was a fanatical atheist. Atheism was the main topic of their conversations. Such fervid atheism is usually a screen for repressed religion. The truly convinced atheist does not emphasize his atheism. He does not talk about it and is careful to avoid blasphemies. The man was interested in dreams and each morning he related several of his dreams. They were full of religious symbols. I was cautious not to reveal to him the meaning of his dreams; such off-hand analyses are always dangerous.... The banker did not want to be disturbed in his supposed atheism.... His atheism was a reaction formation established upon an ineradicable religious belief."

"Nothing enlarges more the gulf of atheism, than that wide passage, which lies between the faith and lives of men pretending to be Christians."

"Atheists keep up their scoffing at the higher being, which was also honoured under the name of the 'highest' or être suprême, and trample in the dust one 'proof of his existence' after another, without noticing that they themselves, out of need for a higher being, only annihilate the old to make room for a new."

"Including, I suppose, death. ... It's an interesting view of atheism, as a sort of crutch for those who can't bear the reality of God."

"As an atheist, I believe that all life is unspeakably precious, because it’s only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it’s gone forever. No afterlives, no second chances, no backsies. So there can be nothing crueler than the abuse, destruction or wanton taking of a life. It is a crime no less than burning the Mona Lisa, for there is always just one of each. So I cannot forgive."

"The thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did; saying that which is made, is, and that which made it, is not. But this folly is infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing."

"“Is there a God?” I said. “I mean, are you in touch, telepathically, with any kind of God?” “No. I’m not in touch with anything like that. As far as I know, there is no God.” “Oh,” I said. “It doesn’t bother you,” the voice said. “You may think it does; but it doesn’t. You’re really on your own. You’ve been learning that.”"

"An Atheist is a man who believes himself an accident."

"When men live as if there were no God, it becomes expedient for them that there should be none; and then they endeavour to persuade themselves so, and will be glad to find arguments to fortify themselves in this persuasion."

"In former days the free-thinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and only through conflict and struggle came to free-thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers who grow up without even having heard of principles of morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages."

"What men deny is not God, but some preposterous idol of the imagination."

"The parasites which live in the intestines of higher animals, feeding upon the nutritive juices which these animals supply, do not need either to see or hear, and therefore for them the visible and audible world does not exist. And if they possessed a certain degree of consciousness and took account of the fact that the animal at whose expense they live believed in a world of sight and hearing, they would perhaps deem such belief to be due merely to the extravagance of its imagination. And similarly there are social parasites, as Mr. A. J. Balfour admirably observes, who, receiving from the society in which they live the motives of their moral conduct, deny that belief in God and the other life is a necessary foundation for good conduct and for a tolerable life, society having prepared for them the spiritual nutriment by which they live. An isolated individual can endure life and live it well and even heroically without in any sort believing either in the immortality of the soul or in God, but he lives the life of a spiritual parasite."

"I would not wish to have to deal with an atheist prince, who would find it in his interest to have me ground to powder in a mortar: I should be quite certain of being ground to powder. If I were a sovereign, I would not wish to have to deal with atheist courtiers, whose interest it would be to poison me: I should have to be taking antidotes every day. It is therefore absolutely necessary for princes and for peoples, that the idea of a Supreme Being, creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger, shall be deeply engraved in people's minds."

"The Caffres, the Hottentots, the Topinambous, and many other small nations, have no God: they neither deny nor affirm; they have never heard speak of Him; tell them that there is a God: they will believe it easily; tell them that everything happens through the nature of things: they will believe you equally. To claim that they are atheists is to make the same imputation as if one said they are anti-Cartesian; they are neither for nor against Descartes. They are real children; a child is neither atheist nor deist, he is nothing."

"What conclusion shall we draw from all this? That atheism is a very pernicious monster in those who govern; that it is also pernicious in the persons around statesmen ...; that, if it is not so deadly as fanaticism, it is nearly always fatal to virtue."

"If there are atheists, whom must one blame if not the mercenary tyrants of souls, who, making us revolt against their knaveries, force a few weak minds to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?"

"Men fattened on our substance cry to us: "Be persuaded that a she-ass has spoken (Balaam's ass); believe that a fish has swallowed a man and has given him up at the end of three days safe and sound on the shore (Jonah); have no doubt that the God of the universe ordered one Jewish prophet to eat excrement (Ezekiel), and another prophet to buy two whores and to make with them sons of whoredom (Hosea)." These are the very words that the God of truth and purity has been made to utter.... These inconceivable absurdities revolt weak and rash minds, as well as wise and resolute minds. They say: "Our masters paint God to us as the most insensate and the most barbarous of all beings; therefore there is no God;" but they should say: "Our masters attribute to God their absurdities and their furies; therefore God is the contrary of what they proclaim, therefore God is as wise and good as they make him out mad and wicked." It is thus that wise men account for things."

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one. What is most repellent in [Holbach's] The System of Nature — after the recipe for making eels from flour — is the audacity with which it decides that there is no God, without even having tried to prove the impossibility. There is some eloquence in the book: but much more rant, and no sort of proof."

"The study of anthropology … confirmed my atheism, which was the faith of my fathers anyway. Religions were exhibited and studied as the Rube Goldberg inventions I'd always thought they were."

"The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front.""

"If we don't play God, who will?"

"One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism."

"In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist."

"No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. Consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters."

"There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God."

"Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith: in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be atheistic with the part of me which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong."

"As in the West, the word God, taken in its usual meaning, signifies a Person, men whose attention, faith and love are almost exclusively concentrated on the impersonal aspect of God can actually believe themselves and declare themselves to be atheists, even though supernatural love inhabits their souls."

"Premature as the question may be, it is hardly possible not to wonder whether we will find any answer to our deepest questions, any signs of the workings of an interested God, in a final theory. I think that we will not."

"The aim of this conference is to have a constructive dialogue between science and religion. I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment."

"Freedom of choice is what you got / Freedom from choice is what you want."

"Twist away those gates of steel / Unlock the secret voice."

"A man's not made of steel / A man is real that's how he feels."

"Love without anger isn't love at all."

"Why believe in things that make it tough on you."

"As a born-again atheist, I now knew exactly what satisfactions were on offer. For the first time in my 38 years I was at one with my own generation.... If I bumped into Richard Dawkins (an old colleague from Oxford days) or had dinner in Washington with Christopher Hitchens ..., I did not have to feel out on a limb. Hitchens was excited to meet a new convert to his non-creed and put me through a catechism before uncorking some stupendous claret. "So - absolutely no God?" "Nope," I was able to say with Moonie-zeal. "No future life, nothing 'out there'?" "No," I obediently replied. At last! I could join in the creed shared by so many (most?) of my intelligent contemporaries in the Western world - that men and women are purely material beings (whatever that is supposed to mean), that "this is all there is" (ditto), that God, Jesus and religion are a load of baloney: and worse than that, the cause of much (no, come on, let yourself go), most (why stint yourself - go for it, man), all the trouble in the world, from Jerusalem to Belfast, from Washington to Islamabad."

"Given your premises, you will have to come up with a different reason for rejecting Christ as you do. But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him."

"Atheism is speculatively as unfounded as theism, and practically can only spring from bad motives."

"By night an atheist half believes in God."

"Atheism is not the denial of the existence of God, but having doubts as to whether God is conscious."

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."

"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 God both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

"Blue Moon, You saw me standing alone, Without a dream in my heart, Without a love of my own."

"Blue Moon, You knew just what I was there for, You heard me saying a prayer for, Someone I really could care for."

"Blue Moon, Now I'm no longer alone, Without a dream in my heart, Without a love of my own."

"Bless our Mountain Greenery home! In a mountain greenery Where God paints the scenery Just two crazy people together"

"She gets too hungry for dinner at eight... She likes a crap game, but never come late... She'd never bother with people she hates... That's why the lady is a tramp."

"I'm wild again, beguiled again A simpering, whimpering child again; Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I. Couldn't sleep and wouldn't sleep When love came and told me, I shouldn't sleep; Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I. I'm wild again! Beguiled again! A simpering, whimpering child again, Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I."

"They that deny a God, destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts, by his body; and if he be not kin to God, by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature."

"Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself, above human frailty."

"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy, in the minds of men."