#atheism

"I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it."

"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing."

"The typical atheist rebels against God as a teenager rebels against his parents. When his own desires or standards are not fulfilled in the way that he sees fit, he, in revolt, storms out of the house in denial of the Word of God and in scrutiny of a great deal of those who stand by the Word of God. The epithet 'Heavenly Father' is a grand reflection, a relation to that of human nature."

"Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like."

"All men are Prophets or else God does not exist."

"The only interesting thing about religion is how many people it's slaughtered. Communism and Nazism are religions as well, make no mistake about it."

"I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.'[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005]"

"We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good."

"One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad."

"An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said.An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated."

"Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home."

"The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all."

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.[Letter to William Bradford Jr. April 1 1774]"

"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."

"God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance."

"I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage"

"The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it."

"What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives."

"If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again."

"There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god."