“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, The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy
“The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.”
Mark Twain
“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
Charles Bukowski
“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. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!”
G eorge Carlin
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...”
C.S. Lewis
“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, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
Christopher Hitchens
“All thinking men are atheists.”
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
“To you, I'm an atheist.
To God, I'm the loyal opposition.”
Woody Allen
“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles à M. Claparede, Professeur de Théologie à Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de M. de Voltaire
“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.”
Emmett F. Fields
“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
Isaac Asimov
“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.”
Napoléon Bonaparte
“I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959
“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”
Christopher Hitchens
“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?”
E picurus
“Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.
Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.
Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.
Was Rorschach.
Does that answer your Questions, Doctor?”
Alan Moore, Watchmen
“Atheism is a non-prophet organization.”
George Carlin
“The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.”
Mark Twain
“If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.”
Woody Allen
“belief is the death of intelligence.”
Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins
“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
“One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.”
Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4
“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”
David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel |
