Expect to find some double-ups here. Job number 238 is to check for double-ups and to tidy up the quotes sections.
"The mind gives meaning to anything, but the meaning it gives is meaningless."
J. Krishnamurti
"We are working for a revolution, the site of which is between the ears."
Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair
"Men who believe absurdities will commit atrocities."
Voltaire
"The God of hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved; cursed, not worshipped. A heaven presided over by such a God must be below the meanest hell."Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1889)
"He who is involved in ecstacies and visions, who takes dreams for reality, and his own imagination for prophesy, is a fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will soon advance to the higher stage and kill men for the love of God."
Voltaire
"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition."
Isaac Asimov
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."
Isaac Asimov
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
Thomas Jefferson
"The bible teaches that women brought sin and death into the world. I don't believe that any man ever talked with god. The bible was written by man out of his love of domination."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"Women are indebted today for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch today where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God."
Helen Gardner – 'Men, Women and Gods.'
"Let me tell you that religion is the cruelest fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race. It is the last of the great schemes of thievery that man must legally prohibit so as to protect himself from the charlatans who prey upon the ignorance and fears of the people."
Joseph Lewis – American Freethinker
"And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathising and benevolent in the heart of man."
Thomas Paine
“I sit alone on the rock of my own individuality, with the waves of superstition and religious tyranny surging around me."
Josephine K. Henry
"The hideous doctrine of eternal torment after death has probably caused more terror and misery, more cruelty and more violation of natural human sympathy, than any religious belief in the history of mankind. Yet this doctrine was unambiguously taught by Jesus."
Margaret Knight – lecturer, Aberdeen University
"The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."Susan B. Anthony
"To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom."
Susan B. Anthony
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
Blaise Pascal 1623-1662
"The Jews, Muslims and Christians got it all wrong. The people of the world only divide into two kinds: one sort with brains and no religion, the other with religion and no brains."
Abul Al Mali, Syrian poet 1095-
"Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom."
Lenin
"Civilised men arrived in the Pacific armed with alcohol, syphilis, trousers and the Bible."
Havelock Ellis 1859-1877
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
Denis Dioderot 1713-1784
"With soap, baptism is a good thing."
Robert G. Ingersoll 1833-1899
"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."
John Buchan 1875-1940
"Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment."
J. Maritain 1882-
"Nothing in the world delights a truly religious people so much as consigning them to eternal damnation."
James Hogg 1770-1835
"Their sighin', cantin', grace-proud faces, Their three-mile prayers and half-mile graces."
Robert Burns 1759-1796
"Women are born worshippers."
Thomas Carlyle 1795-1881
"After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands."
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900
"Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity."
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature... It is the opium of the people."
Carl Marx 1818-1883
"The church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down."
Robert G. Ingersoll 1833-1899
•“My religious superstition gave place to rational ideas based on scientific facts, and in proportion as I looked at everything from a new standpoint, I grew more happy day by day...
•"Only those who have lived all their lives under the dark clouds of vague, undefined fears can appreciate the joy of a doubting soul suddenly born into the kingdom of reason and free thought."
•"I view it as one of the greatest crimes to shadow the minds of the young with these gloomy superstitions, and with fears of the unknown and the unknowable to poison all their joy in life.”
(Three quotes by) Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few."
Stendhall 1783-1842
"Formal religion was organised for slaves: it offered them consolation which earth did not provide."
Elbert Hubbard 1856-1915
"God is no respecter of persons."
(Saint) Peter 1-67
"Religion – A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."
Ambose Bierce 1842-1914
"A comprehended God is no God."
St. John Chrysotom 345-407
"I am sure this Jesus will not do, either for Englishman or Jew."
William Blake 1757-1827
"If God made us in his image, we have certainly returned the compliment."
Voltaire 1694-1778
"Men make gods in their own likeness."
Aldous Huxley 1894-1953
"If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides."
Charles de Montesquieu 1689-1755
"Women give themselves to God when the devil wants nothing more to do with them."
Sophie Arnould 1744-1802
"Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect."
George Santayana 1863-1952
"People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightilly inclined to believe themselves citizens of another."
George Santayana 1863-1953
"Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government."
Bertrand Russell
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism."
Sir William Osler 1849-1919
"Dogmatism is puppyism come to its full growth."
Douglas Jerrold 1803-1857
"Faith is defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."
H.L. Mencken
"It was a schoolboy who said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
Mark Twain
"Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate."
F.M. Knowles
"Faith which does not doubt is dead faith."
Miguel De Unamuno
"Faith is not wanting to know what is true."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"The faith that stands on authority is not faith."
R.W. Emerson
"How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables."
Michel De Montaigne
"FAITH – Feeble Answers for Idiots, Tyrants and Hypocrites."
LoneWolfe
"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."
Bertrand Russell
"An immoral god – a hangover from stone age minds – still corrupts human mentality with its scapegoat justice and the threat of eternal damnation."
Reverend Reginald Howard Bass
'The History of Natural Religion'
"The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness."
Martin Esslin
"I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe."
Leo Rosten
"The great god Ra, whose shrine once covered acres, is filler now for crossword puzzles."
Keith Preston
"It is the task of science to reduce deep truths to trivialities."
Niels Bohr
"Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven."
Milton
"Nowadays we have access to lots more silliness, much faster, and in full colour."
James Randi
• “Nothing grows slower than truth, and nothing faster than superstition.”
• “The first thing for people to do is to get rid of the silly notion that there is anything holy in the name of Jesus any more than in the name of Hercules, Bacchus, or Adonis.”
• “Above all, teach children that prayer is idiotic. There may be one God or twenty. I do not know or care.”
• “We are living in the Twentieth Century of what is called the Christian Era, and we have not outgrown the superstitions of the First Century.”
• “The greatest danger which confronts our nation today is not political but religious, and the preservation of our free institutions does not depend upon our army and navy, but upon the emancipation of the human mind from ecclesiastical slavery. ...You can not have free schools, free speech and a free press where the mind is not free.”
(Five quotes by) Marilla Ricker 1840-1920
"We have witnessed in the notorious Jonestown disaster the tragedy that can occur from the blind following of a false myth. Yet that could be quite infinitesimal in comparison with a nuclear war which people's commitment to an Armageddon theology had let us into. It is not too much to say that Armageddon theology is a more serious threat to our human future than Soviet foreign policy."
Professor Lloyd Geering
"Only error needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself"
Thomas Jefferson
"I know of no book which has been a source of brutality and sadistic conduct, both public and private, that can compare with the Bible"
Reginald Paget
"I now incline to the view that the conversion of Europe to Christianity was one of the greatest disasters of history."
Margaret Knight
"Jesus was a fanatic, and, like most fanatics, he could not tolerate disagreement or criticism. Towards the Pharisees and others who were sceptical of his messianic pretensions, he was often savagely vindictive. Any hint of criticism, any demand that he should produce evidence for his claims, was liable to provoke a torrent of wrath and denunciation."
Margaret Knight
"Jesus, in fact, was typical of a certain kind of fanatical young idealist: at one moment holding forth, with tears in his eyes, about the need for universal love; at the next, furiously denouncing the morons, crooks and bigots who do not see eye to eye with him. It is very natural and very human behaviour. But it is not superhuman. Many of the great men of history (for example, Socrates and Gandhi) have met criticism with more dignity and restraint."
Margaret Knight
"The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"
Jesus of Nazareth (Matt. Ch. 14)
"The belief in eternal torment, still subscribed to by fundamentalist Christian denominations, undoubtedly ranks as the most vicious and reprehensible doctrine of classical Christianity. It has resulted in an incalculable amount of psychological torture, especially among children where it is employed as a terror tactic to prompt obedience".George H. Smith – 'Atheism: The Case Against God'
"No other religion has such a bloodstained record as Christianity."
Margaret Knight
"In the name of the religion of love, large numbers of people were not merely killed but atrociously tortured in ways that make the gas chambers of Belsen seem humane."
Margaret Knight
"The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind."
H.L. Lecky (History of European Morals, Ch. 4)
"There is no justification for the common claim that Christianity was responsible for the abolition of slavery. The Negro slave trade–a far more infamous practice than slavery in the ancient world–was initiated, carried on and defended by Christian men in Christian countries."
Margaret Knight
"It is a terrible commentary on Christian civilisation that the longest period of slave-raiding known to history was initiated by the action of Spain and Portugal, France, Holland and Britain, after the Christian faith had for more than a thousand years been the establised religion of Europe"
H.A.L. Fisher – 'History of Europe, Ch. 23'
"Believers in the Bible are loud in their denunciation of what they are pleased to call the immoral literature of the world; and yet few books have been published containing more moral filth than this inspired word of god".
Robert G. Ingersoll"What we see demonstrated in the United States is a fundamentalist desire for an Armageddon, an egging on of President Reagan towards a nuclear holocaust. This will be a fullfilment of bible prophesy"
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
"Both Catholic and Protestant have to face the fact that the triumph of Christianity was the triumph of barbarism."
G.W. Foote, 1887
"The inspiration of the Bible depends on the credulity of him who reads."
Robert G. Ingersoll
"We desire that the church shall not be judged by its present promises, but by its past performance. We wish to show what it was in the evil days of its supremacy, when opportunity matched inclination, and it acted according to the laws of its nature, unchecked by science, freethought and humanity."
G.W. Foote and J.M. Wheeler – Editors, 'Freethinker' 1887
"You are not an agnostic, Paddy. You are just a lazy slop who is too lazy to go to mass."
Conor Cruise O'Brien — quoting a parish priest
"The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion."
Karl Marx
"The exitance of a world without a God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, exisiting in all his perfections, creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of hell."
Armand Salacrou
"What an amazing capacity for disappointment the church has."
Nigel Balchin
"A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there."
H.L. Mencken
"Priests are no more necessary to religion than than politicians are to patriotism."
John Haynes Holmes
"Some ministers would make good martyrs. They are so dry they would burn well."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
"Say what you like about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant truth that there are only ten of them."
H. L. Mencken
"This is the age of bargain hunters. If it had been this way in biblical times, we'd probably have been offered another commandment free if we had accepted the first ten."
Earl Wilson
"God has no religion."
Mahattma Gandhi
"The most serious doubt that has been thrown upon the authenticity of the miracles is that most of the witnesses in regard to them were fishermen."
Arthur Brinstead
"Religion has not civilised man, man has civilised religion."
Robert G. Ingersoll
"What I got in Sunday School was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian God preposterous... The act of worship, as carried on by Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves grovelling before a Being who, if he really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of respected."
H. L. Mencken
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion."
John Adams (1735-1826)
"Science has done more for the development of western civilisation in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years."
John Burroughs
"When the Apostle Paul had posited universal love between men as the foundation of his Christian community, extreme intolerance on the part of Christendom towards those who remained outside it became the inevitable consequence."
Sigmund Freud
The First Crusade set off on its two-thousand mile jaunt be massacring Jews, plundering and slaughtering all the way from the Rhine to the Jordan.
Herbert J Muller
"In the Temple of Solomon one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses bridles, by the just and marvellous Judgement of God!"
Raimundus de Agiles – ecstatic cleric
"A Christian is a man who feels repentance on a Sunday for what he did on Saturday and is going to do on Monday."
Thomas R. Ybarra
"Most us us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure."
Fred Allen
"Could a being create the fifty billion galaxies, each with two hundred billion stars, then rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh?"Ron Patterson
"All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance, ferocity; and modern religions are only ancient follies."
Baron D'Holbach
"Even the weakest disputant is made so conceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than the wisest who thinks differently from him."
Walter Savage Landor
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C.S. Lewis – 1824-29