“I hate quotes. Tell me what you know.”

“The world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.”

“With God, what is terrible is that one never knows whether it's not just a trick of the devil.”

“Theology is the science of the divine lie.”

“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.”

“Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.”

“Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.”

“... it is not easy to believe that the gods possess any underground dwelling where the souls collect.”

“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

“Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.”

“The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.”

“The idea that a good God would send people to a burning Hell is utterly damnable to me. The ravings of insanity! Superstition gone to seed! I don't want to have anything to do with such a God. No avenging Jewish God, no satanic devil, no fiery hell is of any interest to me.”

“Although I cannot believe that the individual survives the death of his body, feeble souls harbor such thought through fear or ridiculous egotism.”

“My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it.”

“If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which he has inflicted upon men, He would kill himself.”

“I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degradation left in the world.”

“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”

“From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being.
”

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

“How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived.”

“We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity.”

“Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.”

“At the bottom God is nothing more than an exalted father.”

“To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover.”

“I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use.”

“Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook.”

“Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
”

- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?”

- Mark Twain

“It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.”

“A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what he knows.
”

- Mark Twain

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
”

- George Bernard Shaw

“God is dead. Let us not understand by this that he does not exist or even that he no longer exists. He is dead. He spoke to us and is silent. We no longer have anything but his cadaver. Perhaps he
slipped out of the world, somewhere else like the soul of a dead man. Perhaps he was only a dream...God is dead.”

- Sartre

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
”

- Sir Stephen Henry Roberts.

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

- Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662)

“The study of Christian theology … is the study of nothing: it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusions.”

- Thomas Paine, The age of Reason

“Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals; but, however unwilling the partisan of the Christian system may be to believe or acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.—There was more knowledge in the world before that period than for many centuries afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as already said, was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it succeeded was a corruption of an ancient system of theism.”

- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.
”

- Thomas Paine, The Theological Works of

“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
”

- Edgar Allan Poe

“Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
”

- Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, 1889

“God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers-- at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!”

- Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

“I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.”

- Christopher Marlowe

“If God is all powerful, he can do everything. He can make a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it. Then there is something God cannot do, he cannot lift the stone. Therefore an all powerful God does not exist.
”

- Lucretius, Roman poet, Epicurean

“"The poor wretches have convinced themselves that they are going to be immortal and live for all time, by worshipping that crucified sophist and living under his laws...they receive these doctrines by tradition, without any definite evidence. So if any charlatan or trickster comes among them, he quickly acquires wealth by imposing upon these simple people.”

- Lucian, Roman-Syrian writer & lecturer

“If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Let us worship god through Jesus if we must. If ignorance has so far prevailed that this name can still be spoken in all seriousness without being taken as a synonym for rapine and carnage. Every sensible man, every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror…”

- Voltaire

“Trying to find God is a good deal like looking for money one has lost in a dream.”

- Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays

“Religion, n: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the Nature of the Unknowable.”

- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911