Hubble head

Saw another good thread on quotes. I don't remember if I ever posted this here but if I did its good enough for a rerun. A few of the quotes really help solidify my (non)beliefs. They are all great.

(The website I collected these from is no more but since they are quotes I doubt I have to reference more than the original speaker. )

Favorites?

Famous Atheists, Freethinkers, and Others Against Religion
Douglas Adams
John Adams
Susan B. Anthony
Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire"
Isaac Asimov
Napoleon Bonaparte
Marlon Brando
George Carlin
Andrew Carnegie
Arthur C. Clarke
Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain"
Michael Crichton
Clarence Darrow
Charles Darwin
Denis Diderot
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Jodie Foster
Benjamin Franklin
Sigmund Freud
Robert Frost
Galileo Galilei
Bill Gates
Stephen Jay Gould
Robert A. Heinlen
Ernest Hemingway
Sir Alfred Hitchcock
Howard Hughes
Aldous Huxley
Thomas Jefferson
Billy Joel
Helen Keller
Richard Leakey
Nikolai Lenin
Abraham Lincoln
James Madison
Dave Matthews
Marilyn Manson
Karl Marx
John Stuart Mill
Arthur Miller
Freidrich Nietzsche
Thomas Paine
Ayn Rand
Christopher Reeve
Gene Roddenberry
Salman Rushdie
Bertrand Russell
Carl Sagan
William Shatner
George Bernard Shaw
Elizabeth Cady-Stanton
Gloria Steinam
Michael Stipe (R.E.M.)
William Howard Taft
Leo Tolstoy
Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam)
Vincent Van Gogh
Kurt Vonnegut
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Zappa

And what they said...

The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.
-John Adams, U.S. President

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
-John Adams, U.S. President

I was born a heretic. I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.
-Susan B. Anthony

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.
-Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire", French author and playwright

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.
-Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire", French author and playwright

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
-Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire", French author and playwright

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
-Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire", French author and playwright

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
-Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American author

Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
-Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American author

Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
-Ambrose Bierce

[Religion is] the daughter of hope and fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the unknowable.
-Ambrose Bierce

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
-Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
-Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor

All religions have been made by men.
-Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor

Religion is just mind control.
George Carlin, comedian

I don’t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.
Arthur C. Clarke, author

Religion is a byproduct 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?
Arthur C. Clarke, author

Faith is believing something you know ain’t true.
-Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist

If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian.
-Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist

It (the Bible) is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.
-Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.
-Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast.
-Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.
-Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist

If there is a God, he is a malign thug.
-Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment, to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure.
-Clarence Darrow, American lawyer

I believe that relgion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose.
-Clarence Darrow, American lawyer

For myself, I do not believe in any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.
-Charles Robert Darwin, English naturalist

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.
-Charles Robert Darwin, English naturalist

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
-Denis Diderot, French encyclopedist

Religion is all bunk.
-Thomas Edison, American inventor

I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life -- our desire to go on living -- our dread of coming to an end.
-Thomas Edison, American inventor

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
-Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.
-Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist

I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
-Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
-Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
-Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father and inventor

Lighthouses are more helpful then churches.
-Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor

Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.
-Sigmund Freud, German-born psychologist

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
-Sigmund Freud, German-born psychologist

I turned to speak to God, About the world's despair; But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn't there.
-Robert Frost, American poet

Forgive, O Lord, my little joke on Thee and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
-Robert Frost, American poet

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
-Robert Frost, American poet

They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit.
-Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer

History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unkonwn without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
-Robert A. Heinlen, American science-ficiton author

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent.
-Robert A. Heinlen, American science-ficiton author

All thinking men are atheists.
-Ernest Hemingway, American author

Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name. Thy kingdom nada, thy will be nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.
-Ernest Hemingway, American author

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough.
-Aldous Huxley, author

That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.
-Thomas Henry Huxley, English biologist
With soap, baptism is a good thing.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer

The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer

Fear believes--courage doubts. Fear falls up the earth and prays--- courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism---courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, devils and ghosts. Fear is religion, courage is science.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer

Hands that help are far better then lips that pray.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer

Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.
Environment is a sculptor -- a painter.
If we had been born in Constantinople, then most of us would have said: 'There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.' If our parents had lived on the banks of the Ganges, we would have been worshipers of Siva, longing for the heaven of Nirvana.
As a rule, children love their parents, believe what they teach, and take great pride in saying that the religion of mother is good enough for them.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer

The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer

All who doubted or denied would be lost. To live a moral and honest life -- to keep your contracts, to take care of wife and child -- to make a happy home -- to be a good citizen, a patriot, a just and thoughtful man, was simply a respectable way of going to hell.
God did not reward men for being honest, generous and brave, but for the act of faith. Without faith, all the so-called virtues were sins. and the men who practiced these virtues, without faith, deserved to suffer eternal pain.
All of these comforting and reasonable things were taught by the ministers in their pulpits -- by teachers in Sunday schools and by parents at home. The children were victims. They were assaulted in the cradle -- in their mother's arms. Then, the schoolmaster carried on the war against their natural sense, and all the books they read were filled with the same impossible truths. The poor children were helpless. The atmosphere they breathed was filled with lies -- lies that mingled with their blood.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer

Question with boldness even the existance of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat

Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat

Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat

The Christian God can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, evil and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed, beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. The are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being of His Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author,
scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat

I wasn't raised Catholic, but I used to go to Mass with my friends, and I viewed the whole business as a lot of very enthralling hocus-pocus. There's a guy hanging upon the wall in the church, nailed to a cross and dripping blood, and everybody's blaming themselves for that man's torment, but I said to myself, 'Forget it. I had no hand in that evil. I have no original sin. Theres no blood of any sacred martyr an my hands. I pass on all of this.'
-Billy Joel, American musician

I believe that all important matters have to be settled here, not in the clouds somewhere after we kick off.
-Billy Joel, American musician

There is so much in the bible against which every insinct of my being rebels, so much so that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention.
-Helen Keller, American lecturer

All contemporary religions and churches, all and every kind of religious organization, Marxism has always viewed as organs of bourgeois reaction, serving as a defense of exploitation and the doping of the working-classes.
-Nikolai Lenin, Russian revolutionary

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
-Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
-James Madison, U.S. President

In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
-James Madison, U.S. President

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.
-James Madison, U.S. President

I'm glad some people have that faith. I don't have that faith. If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he's done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world.
-Dave Matthews, South African rock musician

Who wants to go to Heaven with all those asshole angels?
-Marilyn Manson, American rock musician

The wretchedness of religion is at once an expression and a protest against real wretchedness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people.
-Karl Marx, German economist and political philosopher

The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille.
-Karl Marx, German economist and political philosopher

The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known.
-John Stuart Mill

O senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm and yet will make Gods by the dozen!
-Michel Eyqyem de Montaigne, French essayist

Faith means not wanting to know what is true.
-Freidrich Nietzsche, German philosopher

So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there cannot be any answer to the question: What is truth?
-Freidrich Nietzsche, German philosopher

The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, a self-derision, and self-mutilation.
-Freidrich Nietzsche, German philosopher

All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race - before it had learned the obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its God to be truthful and understandable in his communications.
-Freidrich Nietzsche, German philosopher

The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.
-Freidrich Nietzsche, German philosopher

There is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body: fear therefore nothing any more.
-Freidrich Nietzsche, German philosopher

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
-Thomas Paine, American revolutionary

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
-Thomas Paine, American revolutionary

It is fear that first brought Gods into the world.
-Gallus Petronius, 1st Century Roman courtier
Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge.
-Ayn Rand, Russian-born author

I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.
-Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek

Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
-Bertrand Russell, British philosopher,
educator, mathemetician, and social critic

Fear is the parent of cruelty, therefore it is no wonder if religion and cruelty have gone hand-in-hand.
-Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathemetician, and social critic

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
-Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathemetician, and social critic

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
-Marquis de Sade, French libertine

My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it. An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic.
-Carl Sagan, American astronomer and author

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.
-George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born English playwright

At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.
-George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born English playwright

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced?
-Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion.
-Elizabeth Cady-Stanton

The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.
-Elizabeth Cady-Stanton

The bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man's bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire...Here is the Bible position of woman briefly summed up.
-Elizabeth Cady-Stanton

By the year 2000, we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.
-Gloria Steinam, women's rights activist

It's an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations with all their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous.
-Gloria Steinam, women's rights activist

I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.
-William Howard Taft, U.S. President

To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege.
-Leo Tolstoy, Russian revolutionary

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.
-Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch painter

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
-Kurt Vonnegut, American author

I don't think we're here for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose' but I'm anticipating a good lunch.
-Dr. James Watson, American biologist

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
-Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect
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.
-Frank Zappa, American musician

SecularFuture

I'm a big fan of Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkings, James Randi, and (on some days) Freidrich Nietzsche. Bertrand Russell is at the top. He had such a POWERFUL brain!

Grad Student Humanist

Those John Adams' quotes are odd, but refreshing.

Adams seems to be the fundies' favorite Founding Father (alliteration not intended). He's a favorite of social conservatives as well. I can't tell you how many times some jag-off on Free Republic pulls the follwoing Adams' quote out of their ass, usually to bash someone who doesn't agree that this country was founded on "Judeo-Christian ethics":

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." - John Adams

Hubble head

Yeah, Nietzsche solidified what I already knew in a few ways. Ingersoll and Jefferson were big ones too.

It's kind of funny that the first guy who really brought light to the world (Edison) gets so little credit for his other enlightenment.

Autonomist

Hi folks:

I don’t think Leo Tolstoy was an atheist, or an agnostic. His political philosophy was anarchist, but with an unusual twist. He believed that all the laws should be done away with, and the only laws that human beings should follow are Gods laws. Human beings should not be punished by other human beings, but transgression of laws would be dealt with by God.

The abstract of his book on this topic can be found here:

http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anar...lstoy/iwu.html

And this page has his collected works. The book which deals with these questions is called “The Kingdom of God is Within You“ , and can be found here:


http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist...toy/TolCW.html

wildernesse

While I don't dispute that those people said what they did, I would like to know the source of the quotes--as in the letter, speech, book, other primary source. The next step after seeing a quote like those mentioned above, is to read the source where it originates.

--tibac

Grad Student Humanist

Sorry, mistaken reply by me.

Hubble head

I wish I could reference them better but since the origins were not posted from the site I snatched them from it is difficult.

I wish I had at least dates as some of the quoted had, like most of us, believed in God at one time or another in their lives and it would be nice to know for sure where they stood in their last days. Some politicians apparently went back and forth on the issue too (not surprised).

Even if a few of these guys weren't atheist/agnostic/non theists their whole lives, most of the words hold more truth about our world than 500 bibles.

wildernesse

For instance, regarding the second John Adams quote:

From here

This is a link to the letter on the Library of Congress page. That link is to the page with the quote in question. Here is the first page, and the third page (the page with the quote in question being the second page), and the fourth, and final, page.

Without access to original sources, it takes more than a little legwork to track down the quote and hear more about what the person is saying. I'm not, in any way, shape or form, suggesting that you are purposefully being less than forthcoming about these sources--or saying that there are not famous atheists.

However, it is best to have the most impeccable information available--especially when there are people who doubt that atheists are upstanding citizens, etc. Luckily, I'm not one of those--I'm just a nut who has plenty of time on her hands and a good grasp of Google. I'll try to search up primary sources for the rest of them (which is what I was trying to do to begin with, so that nitpickers like myself wouldn't have to ask, and because mystery searches like this are fun! I think that this means I'm a hopeless nerd.).

--tibac

Hubble head

Aaaaarrrrrgh! Stop destoying my world!
...just kidding...

Seriously, thanks wildernesse. I'm taking Adams out of the file I saved because of that.

Mark Twain, B. Franklin and good old Albert were challenged in another post so they are also more of the questionable ones, I guess.

But if Wierd Al isn't at least agnostic I'm joining a cult.