Skip to content

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:

Atheism. There is not a single exalting and emancipating influence that does not in turn become inhibitory.

André Gide

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.

Katharine Hepburn

And I thank the Lord a thousand times that he let me become an atheist.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

Thomas Henry Huxley Reply to Charles Kingsley (1860)

Secularism, with its moral relativism, is in direct opposition to Christianity and its absolute morality. The battle is between these two worldviews—one that stands on God's Word and one that accepts man's opinions.

Ken Ham

God never wrought miracle, to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

Francis Bacon Essays (1625)

An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions, atheism is very stupid.

Carl Sagan Conversations with Carl Sagan (2006)

Atheists put on a false courage and alacrity in the midst of their darkness and apprehensions, like children who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing for fear.

Alexander Pope Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

If there are atheists, whom must one blame if not the mercenary tyrants of souls, who, making us revolt against their knaveries, force a few weak minds to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?

Voltaire Philosophical Dictionary (1764)

In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.

Simone Weil Last Notebook (1942)

You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.

Joseph Stalin

No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God. With an orphaned heart, which has lost the greatest of fathers, he stands mourning by the immeasurable corpse of nature, no longer moved and sustained by the Spirit of the universe.

Jean Paul Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

A genuinely democratic society requires a secular ethos: one that does not equate morality with religion, stigmatize atheists, defer to religious interests and aims over others or make religious belief an informal qualification for public office.

Ellen Willis

Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. ... But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.

Edmund Burke

Were it possible to induce the masses to adopt atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant ardor of a religious sentiment, and in its exterior forms would soon become a cult.

Gustave Le Bon The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

Having insured the moderation of a fanatical rabble, by giving out among them the savage war-whoop of atheism, he (Edmund Burke) already fancies himself in full march to Paris.

James Mackintosh

They're out there, they’re thinking it, they’re just afraid to say it. But that’s changing. It’ll be the new gay marriage.

Bill Maher

God can stand being told by Professor Ayer and Marghanita Laski that He does not exist.

J. B. Priestley

"Clear views and certain," Mr. Thomas Hardy once wrote of his own agnosticism. Well, we cannot all have the certainty of agnostics.

Alfred Noyes The Unknown God (1934)

Related topics