Atheism Quotes

1. "I don't think atheism means one does not believe in a spiritual life. I think it means one does not follow the tenets of the established religions."
Author: Amanda Donohoe

2. "Atheism is a way of humility. It's to think oneself to be an animal, as we are actually and to allow oneself to become human."
Author: André Comte Sponville

3. "No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism."
Author: Annie Besant

4. "Empty-brained triflers who have never tried to think, who take their creed as they take their fashions, speak of atheism as the outcome of foul life and vicious desires."
Author: Annie Besant

5. "There is no being eloquent for atheism. In that exhausted receiver the mind cannot use its wings, - the clearest proof that it is out of its element."
Author: Augustus Hare

6. "I oscillate between agnosticism and atheism."
Author: Brad Pitt

7. "The Psalmist believed in a personal God, and knew nothing of that modern pantheism which is nothing more than atheism wearing a fig leaf."
Author: Charles H. Spurgeon

8. "As Peter Berger has noted, the strategy of apologizing for Christian faith by trying to demonstrate its social utility is always eventually self-liquidating. Sooner of later people realize that a great many of the supposedly practical and secular benefits of the Christian religion can be had more easily without religion...The logic of practical atheism may well be more deeply ingrained in the evangelical tradition than conservatives perhaps have realized."
Author: Craig M. Gay

9. "Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed 'holy' leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife. Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism."
Author: Dan Barker

10. "I waver between a cop-out agnostic and principled atheism"
Author: Dan Savage

11. "The current fashion in belligerent atheism usually involves flinging condemnation around with a kind of gallant extravagance, more or less in the direction of all faiths at once, with little interest in precise aim."
Author: David Bentley Hart

12. "An honest and self-aware atheism, therefore, should proudly recognize itself as the quintessential expression of heroic irrationalism:"
Author: David Bentley Hart

13. "Materialism is a conviction based not upon evidence or logic but upon what Carl Sagan (speaking of another kind of faith) called a "deep-seated need to believe." Considered purely as a rational philosophy, it has little to recommend it; but as an emotional sedative, what Czeslaw Milosz liked to call the opiate of unbelief, it offers a refuge from so many elaborate perplexities, so many arduous spiritual exertions, so many trying intellectual and moral problems, so many exhausting expressions of hope or fear, charity or remorse. In this sense, it should be classified as one of those religions of consolation whose purpose is not to engage the mind or will with the mysteries of being but merely to provide a palliative for existential grievances and private disappointments. Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy."
Author: David Bentley Hart

14. "To believe that there is no God takes infinitely more faith than to believe God exists, because all the evidence must be ignored. Atheism is the epitome of blind faith."
Author: David Servant

15. "With reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there were no gods at all."
Author: Diagoras

16. "Atheism is a conclusion reached by the most reasonable methods and one which is not asserted dogmatically but is explained in its every feature by the light of reason. The atheist does not boast of knowing in a vainglorious, empty sense. He understands by knowledge the most reasonable and clear and sound position one can take on the basis of all the evidence at hand. This evidence convinces him that theism is not true, and his logical position, then, is that of atheism.We repeat that the atheist is one who denies the assumptions of theism. he asserts, in other words, that he doesn't believe in a God because he has no good reason for believing in a God. That's atheism -- and that's good sense."
Author: E. Haldeman Julius

17. "Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.... The philosophy of atheism expresses the expansion and growth of the human mind. The philosophy of theism, if we can call it a philosophy, is static and fixed."
Author: Emma Goldman

18. "Atheism tells him what he isn't, and like all of us he yearns to know what he is."
Author: Eric Metaxas

19. "[On famous Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr][Niels] Bohr's sort of humor, use of parables and stories, tolerance, dependence on family, feelings of indebtedness, obligation, and guilt, and his sense of responsibility for science, community, and, ultimately, humankind in general, are common traits of the Jewish intellectual. So too is a well-fortified atheism. Bohr ended with no religious belief and a dislike of all religions that claimed to base their teachings on revelations."
Author: Finn Aaserud

20. "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."
Author: Francis Bacon

21. "Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God."
Author: Francis Bacon

22. "Listen, Parfyon, a few moments ago you asked me a question, and this is my answer: the essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with any reasoning, or any crimes and misdemeanors or atheism; is is something entirely different and it will always be so; it is something our atheists will always overlook, and they will never talk about THAT. But the important thing is that you will notice it most clearly in a Russian heart, and that's the conclusion I've come to! This is one of the chief convictions I have acquired in our Russia. There's work to be done, Parfyon. Believe me, there's work to be done in our Russian world!"
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

23. "It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!"
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

24. "The force that played havoc with the cortisol in my blood was the same force that helped my body recover; if I felt better one day and worse the next, it was unchanged. It chose no side. It gave the girl next to me in the hospital pneumonia; it also gave her white blood cells that would resist the infection. And the atoms in those cells, and the nuclei in those atoms, the same bits of carbon that were being spun into new planets in some corner of space without a name. My insignificance had become unspeakably beautiful to me. That unified force was a god too massive, too inhuman, to resist with the atheism in which I had been brought up. I became a zealot without a religion."
Author: G. Willow Wilson

25. "Countries with a high percentage of nonbelievers are among the freest, most stable, best-educated, and healthiest nations on earth. When nations are ranked according to a human-development index, which measures such factors as life expectancy, literacy rates, and educational attainment, the five highest-ranked countries -- Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands -- all have high degrees of nonbelief. Of the fifty countires at the bottom of the index, all are intensly religious. The nations with the highest homicide rates tend to be more religious; those with the greatest levels of gender equality are the least religious. These associations say nothing about whether atheism leads to positive social indicators or the other way around. But the idea that atheists are somehow less moral, honest, or trustworthy have been disproven by study after study."
Author: Greg Graffin

26. "As I've said, I've never believed in God, which technically makes me an atheist (since the prefix "a" means "not" or "without"). But I have problems with the word "atheism." It defines what someone is not rather than what someone is. It would be like calling me an a-instrumentalist for Bad Religion rather than the band's singer. Defining yourself as against something says very little about what you are for."
Author: Greg Graffin

27. "When there is incest, adultery, atheism, hatred of religion, no more dharma, and sin everywhere, the impossible Iron Age has come; in what way the world will be saved? For the helpless, the Lord Himself will manifest as the Supreme Purusha. He will be called the Kalki incarnation and will be glorious like a lion coming down from heaven."
Author: Guru Gobind Singh

28. "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."
Author: Gustave Le Bon

29. "I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending."
Author: Isaac Asimov

30. "Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion."
Author: Israel Zangwill

31. "The cold logic of mid-twentieth-century atheism has now given way to an era of renewed 'spirituality,' but it is an awakening more thrapeutic than pious, more attuned to self-expression than self-denial. It is now fashionable to talk about God, though it is still deeply unfashionable to believe in him."
Author: J. Mark Bertrand

32. "When we think "i am the best "this is the very first step towards the Atheism >>>>>"
Author: Jagvir

33. "To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny."
Author: Joseph Addison

34. "Atheism has been on the rise for years now, and the Bible of the atheists is 'The Origin of Species.'"
Author: Kirk Cameron

35. "People say there are no atheists in foxholes. A lot of people think this is a good argument against atheism. Personally, I think it's a much better argument against foxholes."
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

36. "I am scared of the day, when they turn atheism into another religion for controlling masses."
Author: M.F. Moonzajer

37. "Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds."
Author: Madalyn Murray O'Hair

38. "The story of the creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much, but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism."
Author: Mahatma Gandhi

39. "It seems to me there is less meanness in atheism, by a good measure. It seems that the spirit of religious self-righteousness this article deplores is precisely the spirit in which it is written. Of course he's right about many things, one of them being the destructive potency of religious self-righteousness. (p. 146)"
Author: Marilynne Robinson

40. "Atheism is a lack of belief...what about the powers of darkness, and that of light, will you trace both to nothing? Then you must have created yourself."
Author: Michael Bassey Johnson

41. "America's freedom of religion, and freedom from religion, offers every wisdom tradition an opportunity to address our soul-deep needs: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, secular humanism, agnosticism and atheism among others."
Author: Parker Palmer

42. "The more a nation gets into darkness, the more it's going to hate the light. The more it's going to run from the light. And we have a generation of people who have given themselves to darkness, and they've embraced atheism, because it gets them away from moral responsibility to God."
Author: Ray Comfort

43. "Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle."
Author: Sam Harris

44. "I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew."
Author: Steven Pinker

45. "[Taken from a BBC documentary]Tariq was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, then part of British-ruled India, in 1943. A Catholic school education did nothing to shake his life-long atheism, which he shared with his communist parents."
Author: Tariq Ali

46. "The very idea of carrying my memory into eternity devastated me, and I took refuge in atheism."
Author: Taylor Caldwell

47. "No it's not!" said Constable Visit. "Atheism is a denial of a god.""Therefore It Is A Religious Position," said Dorfl. "Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny."
Author: Terry Pratchett

48. "I gave up trying to establish where progress lay, and where revolution, or to see the plot -- as Amparo's [Brazilian] comrades expressed it -- of capitalism. How could I continue to think like a European once I learned that the hopes of the far left were kept alive by a Nordeste bishop suspected of having harbored Nazi sympathies in his youth but who now faithfully and fearlessly held high the torch of revolt, upsetting the wary Vatican and the barracudas of Wall Street, and joyfully inflaming the atheism of the proletarian mystics won over by the tender yet menacing banner of a Beautiful Lady who, pierced by seven sorrows, gazed down on the sufferings of her people?"
Author: Umberto Eco

49. "Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism."
Author: Vladimir Lenin

50. "I could feel Monika nudging me furiously at this point, but I refused to look at her. I wasn't feeling particularly reverent about my mother's deadness, or about the vicar, but I do despise that ghastly, ‘You've got to laugh, haven't you?' approach to religious occasions. As a young man, I often goaded my believing friends with crudely logical questions about God. But as the years have passed, I have found myself hankering more and more for a little cosy voodoo in my life. Increasingly, I regard my atheism as a regrettable limitation. It seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather, a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mystery: a species, in fact, of neurosis. There is no chance of my being converted, of course - it is far too late for that. But I wish it wasn't."
Author: Zoë Heller

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