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God made everything, and He made me an atheist. Who are you to question his wisdom?

If god doesn't like the way I live, then let him tell me, not you!

By simple common sense, I don’t believe in God

Charlie Chaplin Comic actor, Director

Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher

Yes, the Christian faith is about sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit

All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race

Faith in religion means not wanting to know what is logically and reasonably true

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time

Sigmund Freud Neurologist, Psychologist

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis

The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life

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

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

Galileo Galilei Physicist, Astronomer

Frank Zappa Musician, Composer, Satirist

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, hey, folks, this is the chimpanzee part of the brain working

The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, all the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn’t asked any questions

George Bernard Shaw Playwright, Nobel Laureate

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

Why should we take advice on sex from the Pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't

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

Gloria Steinem 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

Man needs God like fish need a bicycle

In the future, I hope, we will raise our children to believe in human potential, not God

Bertrand Russell Mathematician, Philosopher, Logician

Religion is based mainly on fear and fear is the parent of cruelty. Therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand

There is something feeble and contemptible about a man who cannot face life without the help of comfortable myths

If there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence

Billy Joel Pianist, Singer, Songwriter

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. There’s no blood of any sacred martyr an my hands. I pass on all of this”

I believe that all important matters have to be settled here, not in the clouds somewhere after we kick off

Stephen Hawking Physicist

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would neither be created nor destroyed it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

One does not have to appeal to God to set the initial conditions for the creation of the universe, but if one does, he would still have to act through the laws of physics

Robert Frost Poet

I turned to speak to God, about the world's despair; but to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn't there

Forgive, O Lord, my little joke on Thee and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way

Benjamin Franklin

One of the Founding Fathers of the United States,

Author, Politician, Scientist, Musician, Inventor

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason

Lighthouses are more helpful then churches

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible, so early in life, I absented myself from Christian assemblies

Karl Marx

Philosopher, Economist, Sociologist, Historian,

Journalist, Revolutionary socialist

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

The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille

Albert Einstein Theoretical physicist

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed

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

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation

Carl Sagan Astronomer, Astrophysicist, Cosmologist, Author

It is said that men may not be the dreams of the Gods, but rather that the Gods are the dreams of men

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism

Ernest Hemingway Author, Journalist

Reading popular scientific books I reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true

All thinking men are atheists

Organized religion is a menace to human happiness

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

Isaac Asimov Biochemist, Professor, Author

Creationists (believers in the biblical story of creation) make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words

Elayne Boosler Comedian, Writer, Actress

The Vatican is against surrogate mothers. Good thing they didn’t have that rule when Jesus was born

Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Lecturer, Poet

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next

Dave Matthews South African rock musician

If there is a God, then he is not a caring God, for he has done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world

The notion of an all-powerful, loving God, the fatherly figure who looks down on us and worries about how we’re doing is more irritating than Santa Claus

Arthur C. Clarke Author, Inventor, Futurist

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him

Religion is a byproduct of fear

For much of human history, religion may have been a necessary evil, but is it still necessary?

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion

Mark Twain Author, Humorist

It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand

What is that treachery of a God that can create disease and misery and crime – create things that men would then be condemned for creating?

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography of a demonic character. It makes Nero an angel!

Blaise Pascal Mathematician, Physicist, Inventor, Writer

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church

Ferdinand Magellan Portuguese explorer

Abraham Lincoln US President

The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma

The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient

My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them

George Carlin Comedian, Philosopher at large!

Religion is just mind control

We created god in our own image and likeness

Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But, he loves you!

Thomas Jefferson Founding father of the US, principal author of the

US Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature

Christianity is the most perverted system ever shone on man

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

Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Cognitive Scientist,

Historian, Activist, Professor

The God of the Bible is genocidal - not only did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide - I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert - not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide - you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive - that's supposed to be a gentle, loving and wonderful God.

Voltaire Enlightenment writer, historian & philosopher

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense

Woody Allen Screenwriter, Director, Actor, Comedian

Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends

To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition

How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter

John Adams American Founding Father, lawyer, statesman,

diplomat and political theorist

The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it

Religion is a system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1500 years

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles

Heinrich Heine Poet, Journalist

If your right eye offends you, pluck it out; If your right arm offends you, cut it off; And if reason and logic offends you, become a Catholic

Of course God will forgive me, isn’t that his job?

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings; and the church did both!

Epicurus Ancient Greek philosopher, Founder of the

school of philosophy called Epicureanism

Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then is he impotent.

Is he able but not willing? Then is he malevolent (malicious and mean).

Is he both able and willing? Then he is evil.

Is he neither able nor willing? Then how do we call him a God?

Richard Dawkins Evolutionary biologist

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

I certainly don't believe in a God who answers prayers, forgives sins, listens to misfortunes, cares about your sins, cares about your sex life, makes you survive death, and performs miracles.

Bill Gates Business magnate, Author, Philanthropist

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning!

John Lennon Musician, Singer/Songwriter

God is not this old man in the sky – I believe that what people call God is something in all of us

Dan Barker Musician, Activist (ex-Christian Preacher!)

The very concept of sin comes from the Bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?

How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost

While they can dig up two or three verses that say God is love, you can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, and yet they claim that YOU are taking things out of context!

Michel de Montaigne Influential writer of the French Renaissance

Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them and nurtures them

Man is certainly starkly mad; he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen

Steven Weinberg Physicist, Nobel Laureate

Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing

The god of traditional religions seems to me to be a terrible character. He's a god who is obsessed to the degree to which people should worship him and the degree to which he is anxious to punish with the most awful torments those who don't worship him in the right way. He is a terrible character. I don’t like him!

Thomas Paine

Author, Radical, Inventor, Revolutionary, and one of

the Founding Fathers of the United States

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

My own mind is my own church

The Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world. The fall of man into sin, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation … these are all fabulous inventions

Henry Mencken Journalist, Essayist, Editor, Satirist, Scholar

We must respect the other fellow's religious beliefs, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his own ‘theory’ that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart

Sunday school: a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents

It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth

Faith can be defined as the illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable

Robert Heinlein Influential science fiction writers

The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant (irritable) if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history!

Robert G. Ingersoll US Civil War veteran, political leader, orator

Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains

Our hope of immortality does not come from any religion – religions, actually, come from that hope

Charles Darwin Naturalist, Evolutionary biologist

The question before the human race is, whether they believe that the world they live in governed by the laws of nature, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles, fables and mythology

I cannot myself understand why a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic Wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars

Elizabeth Cady Stanton American social activist, abolitionist, leading

figure of the early woman's movement

The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation

The Bible of a loving God teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated in the fall of the human race from paradise

Gene Roddenberry Screenwriter, producer (creator of 'Star Trek')

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes

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

Chief Pontiac American Indian Chief

They came to us and

stole our land,

slaughtered most of our people, and

crushed our spirit...

Then they presented their Bible and their religion about a loving God and now they tell us we should be thankful to the 'Lord' for being saved

Thomas Edison Inventor and businessman

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

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God

Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor, French military general

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering those that exploit them

All religions have been made by men

Hélder Câmara Brazilian Roman Catholic Archbishop

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the people are poor, they call me a communist

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him knowledge and he’ll find fish on his own; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish

Catherine Fahringer American activist who campaigned for the

separation of church and state in the USA

“I can't teach this stuff to my kids. I'm nicer than God” (after she was urged by family members to introduce her children to religion)

We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake

Leo Tolstoy Russian writer and revolutionary

To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrileges

The Kingdom of God is Within You

Religion is a set of superstitions, traditions, and ceremonies

Lilly Tomlin Actress, Comedienne, Writer, and Producer

It's not whether God is on our side or whether we're doing God's will, it's being so narcissistic as to think that God is telling you what to do

When you talk to god, it's prayer. When god talks to you, hey, that is schizophrenia

John Steinbeck Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist

This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: The freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual

Spinoza Philosopher

God is the Asylum of Ignorance

Men are free so long as they remained free form the conception of good and evil

Victor Hugo Poet, playwright, novelist, statesman,

human rights activist

If when religions pass away, and Christianity disappears, people will still believe in Gods and the soul

Hell is an outrage on humanity

When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly

Jodie Foster Actress, Producer

There is no direct evidence, so how could you ask me to believe in God when there’s absolutely no evidence that I can see?

I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that’s out there that we haven’t discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don’t know any better

John Malkovich Actor

I believe in people, I believe in humans, I believe in a car, but I don’t believe something I can’t have absolutely no evidence of for millennia. And it’s funny — people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and THEY go to CHURCH…

John Burroughs American naturalist and essayist

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years

The scheme of the universe is too big for us to grasp. The infinite -- what is that? Is it equal to absolute negation'? It is when we have such thoughts that all notions of a God disappear and one says "There is no God." Any God we can conceive of is inadequate

Buddha Deity ?

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it

Stephen H. Roberts Australian academic, author, historian

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours

Joseph Heller American satirical novelist, writer, playwright

And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways – there's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain, misery, hunger …

Stephen Jay Gould American Paleontologist, Evolutionary

Biologist, and Historian of science

The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science – or any honest intellectual inquiry

C. S. Lewis Novelist, Poet, Academic, Medievalist,

Literary critic, Essayist

Theocracy (governing by deity) is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor (an official in the tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church). The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own God

John McCarthy Computer scientist, coined the term “Artificial

Intelligence”

An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question

Mikhail Bakunin Russian revolutionary and theorist

of collectivist anarchism

All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete personality of their intellectual powers

The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind

Jiddu Krishnamurti Indian writer and speaker on philosophical

and spiritual subjects

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear

Since our hearts have withered, God has become awfully important. That is, you want to know God because you have lost the song in your heart and you pursue the singer and ask him whether he can teach you how to sing

Leon Lederman Physicist

Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money

Philosophers have never killed any priests, whereas priests have killed a great many philosophers

Denis Diderot French philosopher, art critic, and writer

Christopher Hitchens Author, Journalist

Your religions have been asserted without any evidence, and what is asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience

Björk Singer, songwriter, music producer, actress

I’ve got my own religion. Iceland set a world record. The United Nations asked people from all over the world a series of questions. Iceland stuck out on one thing: when we were asked what do we believe, 90% said, ‘ourselves’. I think I’m in that group. If I get into trouble, there’s no God or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself!

Peter Atkins Chemist, Writer, Academic (Oxford)

Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny

My aim is to argue that the universe can come into existence without intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations

P. Z. Myers Biologist, Professor, Author

Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanity’s knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind

Jules Renard French Author

I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn’t.