Greatest Atheist Quotes

Take the risk of thinking for yourself

Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis.

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them.

Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.

Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.

It was the schoolboy who said, ""Faith is believing what you know ain't so.""

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

Question with boldness even the existence of a god.

For good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man ... living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God

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. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

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 - that is all that agnosticism means.

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.

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.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

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.

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

A man's ethical behaviour 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.

Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.

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

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.