Quotations on Atheism

I am an atheist, thank God!

~ Unknown

If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian.

~ Douglas Adams

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.

~ George Santayana

How do I define God? I don't.... People who find such conceptions important for themselves have every right to frame them as they like. Personally, I don't. That's why you haven't found my "thoughts on this [for you] criticaI question." I have none, because I see no need for them (apart from the - often extremely interesting and revealing - inquiry into human culture an history).

~ Noam Chomsky

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious ourselves.

~ Albert Einstein

It is best, it seems to me, to separate one's inner striving from one's trade as far as possible. It is not good when one's daily break is tied to God's special blessing.

~ Albert Einstein

In conclusion, there is a marvelous anecdote from the occasion of Russell's ninetieth birthday that best serves to summarize his attitude toward God and religion. A London lady sat next to him at this party, and over the soup she suggested to him that he was not only the world's most famous atheist but, by this time, very probably the world's oldest atheist. "What will you do, Bertie, if it turns out you're wrong?" she asked. "I mean, what if -- uh -- when the time comes, you should meet Him? What will you say?" Russell was delighted with the question. His bright, birdlike eyes grew even brighter as he contemplated this possible future dialogue, and then he pointed a finger upward and cried, "Why, I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence.'"

~ Bertrand Russell

- Al Seckel, in Preface to Bertrand Russell on God and Religion

When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.

~ Pearl S. Buck

Believing in gods always causes confusion.

~ Pearl S. Buck

The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.

~ Emma Goldman

I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.

~ G.K. Chesterton

I once wanted to become an atheist but I gave up . . . they have no holidays.

~ Henny Youngman

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"

~ Quentin Crisp

To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.

~ Joseph Addison

I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother Goose.

~ Clarence Darrow

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means.

~ Clarence Darrow

- Scopes trial, Dayton, Tennessee, July 13, 1925

An atheist is one who hopes the Lord will do nothing to disturb his disbelief.

~ Franklin P. Jones

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

~ Sir Francis Bacon

Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man.

~ Sir Francis Bacon

Ability is of little account without opportunity.

~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Infidelity does not consist in believing or in disbelieving: it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.

~ Thomas Paine

There is only one greater folly than that of the fool who says in his heart there is no God, and that is the folly of the people that says with its head that it does not know whether there is a God or not.

~ Otto von Bismarck

There are no atheists in the foxholes of Bataan.

~ Douglas MacArthur

Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.

~ Heywood Broun

The atheist has no hope.

~ J.F. Clarke

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.

~ Fulton J. Sheen