Quotes on Religion & Reason

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”

“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”

“Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.”

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”

“Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.”

“Is it too modern to notice that there is nothing in the Ten Commandments about the protection of children against cruelty?”

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

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

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

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning.”

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

“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency.”

“Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary.”

“The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love.”

“Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings.”

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

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

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”

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

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”

“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.”

“So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.”

“There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.”

“The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight — that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood.”

“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

“It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”

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

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”

“There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.”

“The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.”

“Reason, observation, and experience — the holy trinity of science.”

“The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation.”

“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?”

“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.”

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.”

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

“My own mind is my own church.”

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind.”

“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.”

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”

“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.”

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

“It's not that I don't believe in God. I just have no need for that hypothesis.”

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.”

“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

“The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent of our desires.”

“I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never combatted combated injustice:Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.”

“Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing 'yes, gravity is real! I will have faith!'”

“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.”

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called Religion.”

“Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.”

“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.”

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

“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.”

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he will starve to death while praying for a fish.”

“A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary.”

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

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

“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.”

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

“The God hypothesis is no longer of any pragmatic value for the interpretation or comprehension of nature, and indeed often stands in the way of better and truer interpretation.”

“You don't need religion to have morals. If you can't determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy, not religion.”

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”