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Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
-- Latin proverb
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
-- Diderot
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
--Steven Weinberg
For the act of being born, we must seek forgiveness.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer gods than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
-- Stephen F. Roberts
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually 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.
-- Albert Einstein
The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic 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.
-- Preface to Androcles and the Lion by
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82
The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815
The civil government ... functions with complete success ... by the total separation of the Church from the State.
-- James Madison, 1819, Writings
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
-- George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)
Common sense is not so common. (Le sens commun n'est pas si commun.)
-- Voltaire
Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
-- Voltaire
If god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.
-- Voltaire
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
-- Napoleon
Man is a marvelous curiosity ... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea.
-- Mark Twain, "Letters from the Earth"
Moral indignation -- jealousy with a halo.
-- H G Wells
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.
-- Abraham Lincoln
It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to Infidelity.
-- Abraham Lincoln
My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
-- Abraham Lincoln
If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.
-- George Washington
