John Adams
The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most
yahooist brutality, is patently endured, countenanced, propagated,
and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with the dogma of a
sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you
have distrubed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and
hand,
and fly into your face and eyes.
Susan B. Anthony
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do
because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
William Blake
Both read the bible day and night - but you
read black where I read white.
Thomas Edison
I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the
religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life
for individuals, or of a personal God.
Albert Einstein
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectively on sympathy,
education, and social ties; 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.
Benjamin Franklin
I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects
or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely
above it.
Thomas Jefferson
If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may
hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the
world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity]
one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables
and mythologies.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will
deserve neither and lose both.
Ferdinand Magellen
The Church says the Earth is flat but I know that it is round.
For I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a
shadow than in the Church.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
After all it is setting a high value upon our opinions
to roast people alive on account of them.
Thomas Paine
My mind is my own church.
Ayn Rand
The good, say the mystics, is God, a being whose only definition is
that he is beyond man's power to conceive - a definition
that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts
of existence. Man's mind say the mystics, must be subordinated to the
will of God. Man's standard of value say the mystics, is the pleasure
of God, whose standards are beyond man's comprehension and must be
accepted on faith.
Thus, the purpose of man's life is to become an abject zombie
who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not
to question.
Bertrand Russell
One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion,
because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of
any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater
has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs.
Mark Twain
The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and
progressive - but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The
Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo
down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was
regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced
against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever
taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks
surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years
before the Christian religion was born.
The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the
conservative adopts them.