Quotes From Nontheists
"Faith is believing in something you know ain't true."--Mark Twain
"God is the invention of Man. So the nature of God is only a shallow mystery. The deep mystery is the nature of Man."--Anonymous
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law"--Thomas Paine
"The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it."--Robert Ingersoll
"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" --Thomas Paine
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."--Albert Einstein
"A good, all-loving god would not destroy his creations no matter how they act. He tells parents to love their children unconditionally. I say 'you first, God.'"--Ryan Hofmeister
"I have never made but one prayer to God. Oh, Lord! Make my enemies look ridiculous. And God has answered it"--Voltaire
"It has been discovered that the man who was lost in thought was not a church member."--Lemuel K. Washburn
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."--James Madison
"There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice."--Thomas Paine
"Religious bondage shakles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."--James Madison
"If atheism is a religion, than health is a disease."--Clark Adams
"Even if God himself had tried to tell us that three was one...and one equals three, you and I would never have believed it. We would never fall victims to such lies."--John Adams
"If you love God, burn a church."--Jello Biafra
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man" --Thomas Jefferson
"Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave."--Bertrand Russell
"The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie" --Frederick Nietzsche
"When the gods punish us, they answer our prayers."--Oscar Wilde
"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 upon fables and mythologies."--Thomas Jefferson
"Why should the residence of a preacher be untaxed? Useful citizens must pay taxes on their homes. Yet the Preacher -- actually and notoriously the least useful member of the community -- lives in a tax-free dwelling."--E. Haldeman-Julius
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being will be classes with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."--Thomas Jefferson
"Whenever I think of how religion started, I picture some frustrated old man making out a list of all the ways he could gain power, until he finally came up with the great solution of constant fear and guilt, then he leaped up and started planning a new wardrobe."--Steve Blake
"All religions have been made by men"--Napoleon Bonaparte
"They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit."--Galileo Galilei
"In the affairs of this world, men are saved, not by faith, but by want of it."--Benjamin Franklin
"Looking at the Bible, it would seem that God is just a more highly evolved human."--Ryan Hofmeister