ATHEISM QUOTES
quotations about atheism
God was always invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time -- life and death -- stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
attributed, Superstrings: A Theory of Everything
The most dangerous type of atheism is not theoretical atheism, but practical atheism -- that's the most dangerous type. And the world, even the church, is filled up with people who pay lip service to God and not life service. And there is always a danger that we will make it appear externally that we believe in God when internally we don't. We say with our mouths that we believe in him, but we live with our lives like he never existed. That is the ever-present danger confronting religion. That's a dangerous type of atheism.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church, Feb. 28, 1954
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 one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Free Inquiry, spring 1982
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Gutkind Letter, Jan. 3, 1954
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Life Magazine, Dec. 1988
When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.
UMBERTO ECO
Foucault's Pendulum
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Lifetime of Letters
Imagine that the brain is a computer and that religion is a virus. Atheism is the wiping of that virus.
NICK HARDING
News Talk, January 25, 2016
It is not hardness of heart or evil passions that drive certain individuals to atheism, but rather a scrupulous intellectual honesty.
STEVE ALLEN
2000 Years of Disbelief
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
All children are Atheists; they have no idea of God.
PAUL-HENRI HOLBACH
Le Bon-Sens, ou, Idees Naturelles Opposees aux Idees Surnaturelles
Since ancient times, the philosophers' secret has always been this: we know that God does not exist, or, at least, if he does, he's utterly indifferent to our individual affairs--but we can't let the rabble know that; it's the fear of God, the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward, that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own.
ROBERT J. SAWYER
Calculating God
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
RICHARD DAWKINS
attributed, The Root of All Evil
Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Twilight of the Idols
The history of atheism matters. It matters not just for intellectual reasons--that is, because it behooves us to understand the past as fully as we can--but also on moral, indeed political grounds. History confers authority and legitimacy. This is why authoritarian states seek to deny it to those thy do not favor, destroying historic sites and outlawing traditional practice. Atheist history is not embodied in buildings or rituals in quite the same way, but the principle is identical. If religious belief is treated as deep and ancient and disbelief as recent, then atheism can readily be dismissed as faddish and inconsequential. Perhaps, even, the persecution of atheists can be seen as a less serious problem than the persecution of religious minorities. The deep history of atheism is then in part a human rights issue: it is about recognizing atheists as real people deserving of respect, tolerance, and the opportunity to live their lives unmolested.
TIM WHITMARSH
Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World
All thinking men are atheists.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
A Farewell to Arms
If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? If he has spoken, why is the universe not convinced? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The Necessity of Atheism
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
CARL SAGAN
Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
Religion has actually 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 special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!... But He loves you!
GEORGE CARLIN
"George Carlin on Religion"
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.
JOHN MCCARTHY
"Agnostics and Atheists"