Quotes
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish (Muslim) Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.

To sum up:
1. The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute.
2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him a ride.

Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?

Fundamentalism isn’t about religion. It’s about power.

No Gods – No Masters.

It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it’s the cyanide.

Religion is against women’s rights and women’s freedom. In all societies women are oppressed by all religions.

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

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?

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced.

The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each other on account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about botany and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father and mother. It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about. Science will bring, not a sword, but peace.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it’s the cyanide.

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?

Fundamentalism isn’t about religion. It’s about power.

That the world is in a bad shape is undeniable, but there is not the faintest reason in history to suppose that Christianity offers a way out.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe.

If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and CARES about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.

I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

ATHEISM = Liberation through Reason and Knowledge.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it’s the cyanide.

Fundamentalism isn’t about religion. It’s about power.

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.

“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.”

Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous.

To sum up:
1. The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute.
2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him a ride.

The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each other on account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about botany and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father and mother. It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about. Science will bring, not a sword, but peace.
