Welcome to Gaia! ::

heres just a list of atheist quotes I found, (note:not all of the people speaking are athist, thought most are, some may just be questioning religion so people may find a deeper understanding)

tell me what you think about my findings. and feel free to debate them.



"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."
- Stephen Roberts

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."
- John Buchan

"No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism."
-Annie Wood Besant

"It is said that men may not be the dreams of the Gods, but rather that the Gods are the dreams of men."
- Carl Sagan

"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?"
- Epicurus

"Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people"
- Jesse Ventura

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
- H. L. Mencken

"Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions"
- Blaise Pascal

"Faith is believing something you know ain't true."
- Mark Twain

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
- Benjamin Franklin

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
- Carl Sagan

"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense."
- Chapman Cohen

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
- Mark Twain

"Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own?"
- Robert G. Ingersoll

"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned."
- unknown

"The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
- Abu Ala Al-Ma'arri

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
- Thomas Jefferson

"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies."
- Thomas Jefferson

" The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."
- John Adams

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
- Benjamin Franklin

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
-Richard Dawkins

“All thinking men are atheists”
-Ernest Hemingway

“A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism”
-Donald Morgan

“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”
-Edmond de Goncourt

“A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism”
-Donald Morgan quotes

“There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.”
-Robert Green Ingersoll

“God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.”
-Francis Bacon, Sr.

“In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.”
-James Madison

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. … Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; 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

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”
-Albert Einstein

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
-Gandhi

"What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof."
-Christopher Hitchens

“With or without religion, 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

“Where knowledge ends, religion begins.”
-Benjamin Disraeli

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.”
-unknown

“There’s a phrase we live by in America: “In God We Trust”. It’s right there where Jesus would want it: on our money.”
-Bill Maher

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
-Isaac Asimov

“One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.”
-Arthur C. Clarke

“Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.”
-Robert Ingersoll

"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."
- Bertrand Russell

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking."
- Carl Sagan

"Religious experiences are like those induced by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, and sleep deprivation: They tell no uniform or coherent story, and there is no plausible theory to account for discrepancies among them."
- Michael Martin

"If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers."
- Steve Allen

"God lives in the imaginary world."
-anonymous 6 year old girl

"Christianity has more holes in it then Spongebob"
- Greydon Square

“Your actions are more important than your beliefs.”
-unknown

“The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.”
- Delos B. McKown

"If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts."
-Lance Armstrong

"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."
-Francis Bacon

“I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother Goose.”
-Clarence Darrow

“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”
– Gene Roddenberry

“Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.”
– Edward Abbey

“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

“Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the Creator of human intelligence.”
– Anonymous

"You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate."
– Richard A. Weatherwax

"What’s “God”? Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God’s the guy that ignores you."
– Steve Buscemi (From the movie “The Island”)

"To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I wouldn’t be wrong to ask."
– Geoff Mather

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
– Mark Twain

"He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave."
– William Drummond

"Remember, Jesus would rather constantly shame gays than let orphans have a family."
– Steven Colbert

"Religion does three things quite effectively: Divides people, Controls people, Deludes people."
– Carlespie Mary Alice McKinney

"Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains."
– Robert G. Ingersoll

"A believer states everything must have a creator but fail to say how he was created."
– Anonymous

"Gods don’t kill people. People with Gods kill people."
– David Viaene

"I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to hell if I’m ‘bad’."
– Mike Fuhrman

"Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions."
– Frater Ravus

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."
– Robert Pirsig

"Atheists will celebrate life, while you’re in church celebrating death."
– Anonymous

"Animals do not have gods, they are smarter than that."
– Ronnie Snow

"we atheists like to play with reason, and believers will never understand it. please just don’t feel offended."
- Anonymous

OPer said himself that not all of those quoted were atheists, just that these are quotes atheists would enjoy.

Happens to the best of us.

I'd been gonna say... Pretty sure it was Franklin who would go into a meditative state to figure out his most troubling problems with inventions. He'd hold a handful of pennies to keep himself from falling asleep, focus on what he was trying to figure out, and trance out until he got it. biggrin I thought that was a pretty cool tidbit. Generally not the stuff of Atheism, though.

Agreed.

I just put this together last night...

click for a long list of some of the better atheistic quotes

Religion does not deserve any respect.

I was mostly going on the fact that challenging religion in a serious manner tends to automatically disrespect it. Not challenging religion is just silly. I also do not like religion with a half-hearted passion that tends to come out on the internet razz . Weird how that works eh?