All Quotes

"Elizabeth had fallen victim to the greatest cosmic prank of all time, the flu that had swept across the world in the spring and summer of 1918, as if the bloody abattoir in the trenches hadn't been evidence enough of humanity’s divine disfavor. That's what Elizabeth had called it in the last letter he'd ever had from her: God's judgment on a world gone mad. Garner had given up on God by then: he'd packed away the Bible Elizabeth had pressed upon him after a week in the field hospital, knowing that its paltry lies could bring him no comfort in the face of such horror, and it hadn't. Not then, and not later, when he’d come home to face Elizabeth's mute and barren grave."

"Une societé d'athées inventerait aussitôt une religion."

"Experience is, in fever and anguish, the putting into question (to the test) of that which a man knows of being. Should he in this fever have any apprehension whatsoever, he cannot say: “I have seen God, the absolute, or the depths of the universe”; he can only say “that which I have seen eludes understanding”—and God, the absolute, the depths of the universe are nothing if they are not categories of the understanding. If I said decisively, “I have seen God,” that which I see would change. Instead of the inconceivable unknown—wildly free before me, leaving me wild and free before it—there would be a dead object and the thing of the theologian, to which the unknown would be subjugated."

"A religion may be discerned in capitalism—that is to say, capitalism serves essentially to allay the same anxieties, torments, and disturbances to which the so-called religions offered answers."

"Empty-brained triflers who have never tried to think, who take their creed as they take their fashions, speak of atheism as the outcome of foul life and vicious desires."

"God is denied either because the world is so bad or because the world is so good. Original: Бога отрицают или потому, что мир так плох, или потому, что мир так хорош."

"Today's secularists too often have very little accurate knowledge about religion, and even less desire to learn. This is problematic insofar as their sense of self is constructed in opposition to religion. Above all, the secularist is not a Jew, is not a Christian, not a Muslim, and so on. But is it intellectually responsible to define one's identity against something that one does not understand?"

"Knowledge of Karma gives the conviction that if ... Virtue in distress, and vice in triumph Make atheists of mankind,(Dryden) it is only because mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that man is himself his own saviour and his own destroyer."

"The light of Christianity has only served to show how much more hypocrisy and vice its teachings have begotten in the world since its advent, and how immensely superior were the ancients over us in every point of honor.. .The clergy, by teaching the helplessness of man, his utter dependence on Providence, and the doctrine of atonement, have crushed in their faithful followers every atom of self-reliance and self-respect. So true is this, that it is becoming an axiom that the most honorable men are to be found among atheists and the so-called “infidels”... Their system breeds atheism, nihilism, despair, and crime..."

"There is no proselyter half so energetic as the hard-shelled atheist."

"Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God."

"We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us, and among many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition, might take place of it."

"Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. ... But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious."

"I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person... I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is."

"I have heard of a man exclaiming "I am an atheist, thank God!""

"Theist and Atheist: The fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name."

"Atheism is a natural result of intellectual honesty."

"An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions, atheism is very stupid."

"Religion has actually 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 special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!. . . But He loves you!"

"Mon chien est athée: il ne crois plus en moi."

"Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity."

"Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion."

"Atheism is, I suppose, the supreme example of a simple faith."

"If there were not God, there would be no atheists."

"Atheists aren't angry because we're selfish, or bitter, or joyless. Atheists are angry because we have compassion. Atheists are angry because we have a sense of justice. Atheists are angry because we see millions of people being terribly harmed by religion, and our hearts go out to them, and we feel motivated to do something about it. Atheists aren't angry because there's something wrong with us. Atheists are angry because there's something right with us."

"The habit of arguing in support of atheism, whether it be done from conviction or in pretense, is a wicked and impious practice."

"  bold with joy, Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops her blue-fringed lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, "Where is it?""

"Most atheists, if they worship anything, worship something which really exists but is not worthy of worship."

"In order for capitalism to have a clear path, it needs to profane all that is sacred; there must be no limits to what is saleable. The totalitarian commercialism which is now the established Church throughout the West has come close to achieving this."

"I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers."

"Atheism can never be an institution; ... it can never be more than a destitution."

"It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Without the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power we could have little faith in ourselves. We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love. Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is part of an unending plan."

"Very often atheists themselves admit that they have no evidence of God's absence, but they try to put a different spin on it. They'll tell you, “No one can prove a universal negative” (like “There is no God”). They think this somehow excuses them from needing evidence against God's existence. But not only is it false that you can't prove a universal negative (all you have to do is show something is self-contradictory), but more importantly, this claim is really an admission that it's impossible to prove atheism! Atheism involves a universal negative, you can't prove a universal negative, therefore, atheism is unprovable. It turns out that it is the atheist who is believing a view for which there is and can be no evidence."

"Even the Atheists … readily acknowledge it for an indubitable truth, that there must be something … which was never made or produced — and which therefore is the cause of those other things that are made, something … whose existence must needs be necessary.... Wherefore all the question now is, what is this … self-existent thing, which is the cause of all other things that are made. Now there are two grand opinions opposite to one another concerning it; for, first, some contend, that the only self-existent, unmade and incorruptible thing is senseless matter.... But because this is really the lowest and most imperfect of all beings, others on the contrary judge it reasonable, that the first principle and original of all things should be that, which is the most perfect … not senseless matter, but a perfect conscious understanding nature, or mind. And these are they, who are strictly and properly called Theists, who affirm, that a perfectly conscious understanding being, or mind, existing of itself from eternity, was the cause of all other things; and they, on the contrary, who derive all things from senseless matter, as the first original, and deny that there is any conscious understanding being self-existent and unmade, are those that are properly called Atheists."

"If this be not atheism, to acknowledge no other deity besides dead and senseless matter, then the word hath no signification."

"There are no atheists in foxholes."

"Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history."

"The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth."

"Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

"It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?"

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."

"Atheists have the intellectual courage to accept reality for what it is: wonderfully and shockingly explicable. As an atheist, you have the moral courage to live to the full the only life you’re ever going to get: to fully inhabit reality, rejoice in it, and do your best finally to leave it better than you found it."

"Diderot paid a visit to the Russian Court at the invitation of the Empress. He conversed very freely, and gave the younger members of the Court circle a great deal of lively atheism. The Empress was much amused, but some of her councillors suggested that it might be desirable to check these expressions of doctrine. The Empress did not like to put a direct muzzle on her guest's tongue, so the following plot was contrived. Diderot was informed that a learned mathematician was in possession of an algebraic demonstration of the existence of God, and would give it him before all the Court, if he desired to hear it. Diderot gladly consented.... [T]he mathematician … was Euler. He advanced towards Diderot, and said gravely, and in a tone of perfect conviction: Monsieur, (a+bn)/n=x, donc Dieu existe; répondez! Diderot, to whom algebra was Hebrew, was embarrassed and disconcerted; while peals of laughter arose on all sides. He asked permission to return to France at once, which was granted."

"At the end of Being and Nothingness, ... Being in-itself and Being for-itself were of Being; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself was linked up to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the essential project of human-reality. What was named in this way, in an allegedly neutral and undetermined way, was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of man and God, the relation of man to God, the project of becoming God as the project constituting human-reality. Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure."

"Laissez-nous donc tout confondre, amour, religion, génie, et le soleil et les parfums, et la musique et la poésie: il n'y a d'athéisme que dans la froideur, l'égoïsme, la bassesse."

"“Skepticism is my nature. Freethought is my methodology. Agnosticism is my conclusion. Atheism is my opinion. Humanitarianism is my motivation.”"

"It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith in a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!"

"The overwhelming majority of countries fail to respect the rights of atheists and freethinkers although they have signed U.N agreements to treat all citizens equally."

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

"Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."