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Atheism Quotes

Carl Sagan has the most entries, then Thomas Henry Huxley, Simone Weil, Voltaire and Christopher Hitchens. Weil, a deeply religious writer, is on the list because she wrote about its edges. The sourced lines include Russell’s remark in Sceptical Essays (1928) that thought is not free if professing certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living, and Woody Allen’s in Stardust Memories (1980), “To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.”

Three entries are flagged. The argument that God is either unwilling or unable to prevent evil is credited to Epicurus and disputed; the notes show it reaches us second-hand, in a later writer’s account of him. “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful” is credited to Seneca and disputed. A line about having too high an IQ to be anything but an atheist, credited to Donald Trump, is marked misattributed.

Random quote on Atheism

Most quoted on atheism:

Government has no right to hurt the hair of an Atheist for his Opinions. Let him have a care of his Practices.

John Adams

I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Ursula K. Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.

Sri Aurobindo Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913)

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism.
Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists.

Michael Crichton Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)

The atheist confirms faith. And like a guinea pig that confirms my thesis or my faith in God.

Jean Guitton

After the Civil War any well-established village in New England or the northern Middle West could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Denis William Brogan The American Character (1944)

Transhumanism is the most inclusive ideology for all ethnicities and races, the religious and atheists, conservatives and liberals, young and old.

Newton Lee

I gave a school speech in which I rejected all belief as an affront to common sense. I was an atheist, and I was 12: it seemed open-and-shut.

Martin Amis The voice of the lonely crowd (2002)

[N]ever trust a German when he tells you he's an atheist.

Curtis Yarvin

Me pray? Never! I'm an atheist.

Sarah Bernhardt What Great Men Think of Religion (1945)

I don’t have faith nor do I think I will have it in the future, but I’m not an atheist. My faith is that of a secular person. You might call it “morality.”

Kenzaburō Ōe Paris Review interview (2007)

Thank God I'm an atheist.

Luis Buñuel Mon Dernier soupir (1983)

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Seneca the Younger Disputed What Great Men Think About Religion (1945)

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?

Epicurus Disputed

In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.

Albert Einstein Attributed

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. 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 religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Albert Einstein Attributed Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Free-thinker mentality.

Albert Einstein Attributed Einstein and Religion (1999)

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.

Albert Einstein Attributed Einstein and Religion (1999)

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.

Fulton J. Sheen Misattributed

The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for her.

Werner Heisenberg Misattributed

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