Quotes
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.
Religion is against women’s rights and women’s freedom. In all societies women are oppressed by all religions.
Fundamentalism isn’t about religion. It’s about power.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
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.
The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God.
It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty.
Suppose we’ve chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we’re just making him madder and madder.
Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.
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.
Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.
Fundamentalism isn’t about religion. It’s about power.
No Gods – No Masters.
Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it’s the cyanide.
If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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 count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people.
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.
Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it’s the cyanide.
Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.
It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty.
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 count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
Hast thou reason? I have.
Why then dost not thou use it?
For if this does its own work,
what else dost thou wish?
The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God.