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title: "Quotes & Criticisms of Religion"
description: "The sharpest, funniest, and most thought-provoking quotes about religion from thinkers, scientists, and comedians."
canonical: https://opendoubt.com/criticisms
source: html
---

# Quotes & Criticisms of Religion

> The sharpest, funniest, and most thought-provoking quotes about religion from thinkers, scientists, and comedians.

Quotable

# What they said about _religion._

The sharpest, funniest, and most thought-provoking lines from thinkers, scientists, and comedians — collected in one place.

[Christopher Hitchens](/people/christopher-hitchens)Author & Journalist

> “Religion poisons everything.”

> “Gullibility and credulity are considered undesirable qualities in every department of human life — except religion.”

> “Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.”

> “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

[Richard Dawkins](/people/richard-dawkins)Evolutionary Biologist & Author

> “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

> “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.”

> “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.”

[Sam Harris](/people/sam-harris)Neuroscientist & Author

> “Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?”

> “If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures.”

> “Science is not a perfect instrument, but it is a self-correcting one. When it goes wrong, it has methods for detecting that it has gone wrong.”

## George Carlin

Comedian & Social Critic

> “I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.”

> “Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky, who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And he has a list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke forever and ever — but he loves you.”

## Carl Sagan

Astronomer & Author

> “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

> “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

> “For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

## Bertrand Russell

Philosopher & Mathematician

> “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

> “Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.”

## Mark Twain

Author & Humorist

> “It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me. It's the parts I do understand.”

> “Faith is believing what you know ain't so.”

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Go deeper

[Watch the best debates →](/debates)[Christopher Hitchens](/people/christopher-hitchens)[Richard Dawkins](/people/richard-dawkins)[Sam Harris](/people/sam-harris)

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