Top 15 Quotes By Famous Atheists

1. Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night — Isaac Asimov

2. I don’t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life. — Andrew Carnegie

3. All thinking men are atheists. — Ernest Hemingway

4. Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. — Benjamin Franklin

5. Faith means not wanting to know what is true. — Friedrich Nietzsche

6. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. — George Bernard Shaw

7. Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. — Kurt Vonnegut

8. I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. — Frank Lloyd Wright

9. Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. — Denis Diderot

10. A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. — Samuel Clemens

11. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud

12. Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. — Edward Gibbon

13. The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. — Ferdinand Magellan

14. Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. — Woody Allen

15. It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous. — Gloria Steinem

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Permalink Reply by Dinah on January 3, 2009 at 10:12am

awesome quotes! =) i especially love number 12 & 13 =) really speak into my heart =)

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Permalink Reply by Gina on January 3, 2009 at 10:32pm

10. A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. — Samuel Clemens

BEST

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Permalink Reply by jljahrig on January 27, 2009 at 11:40pm

Love the quotes ~ I like Voltaire's quotes he loved to poke fun at the church and their sheep back in the day!

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. - Voltaire

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Permalink Reply by brkfstclblvr on March 19, 2009 at 6:28am

I love the Josh Charles quote!! Is that the actor Josh Charles (from Threesome, Sports Night, etc.)? Gotta love an adorable, logical, like-mided guy...

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Permalink Reply by James Cox on August 9, 2012 at 8:58pm

I do not see 'truth' as 'vulgar', but I can see it as non-validating.

At times I wonder of 'faith' is that last stand against raw fact. Like a frog grabing the throat of a large bird before the frog is consumed, that last act of defiance, before reality settles the issue of delusions of immortality.

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Permalink Reply by Scott on January 14, 2010 at 6:37pm

Vonnegut wasn't an atheist, he was a humanist. He meant that you should always question your faith, not just follow it blindly.

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Permalink Reply by Davis Goodman on May 27, 2014 at 9:02pm

He utterly trashed and ridiculed religion in several of his books.

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Permalink Reply by Evan on March 5, 2010 at 7:07am

Ugh. It depresses me that so many atheists trade one sort of folly for another and think themselves superior to their fellow man as a result. "All thinking men are atheists"? Please. To err is human, not Christian. In my experience, atheists hold plenty of patently illogical beliefs just as everyone else does; "Goddidit" just isn't one of them. It's this sort of rank arrogance that divides humanity and retards genuine progress. Was Einstein a fool, since he believed that there is a design? Was Aristotle nothing more than a useful idiot? What about Isaac Newton, or George Washington, or Mohandas Gandhi, or Francis Collins? Gullible morons all?

Much as I hate it when theists declare that atheism is just another religion, one generally based on just as much blind faith and bigotry as the rest of them, this sort of stereotyping and ill logic makes it difficult to credibly contest that position.

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Permalink Reply by Kairan Nierde on February 23, 2012 at 4:21pm

I agree that atheists need to get their houses in order before arrogantly claiming they have superior logical faculties. I know an atheist that believes in spirits and I bump into anti-vaccers on the net.

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Permalink Reply by Doc Feral on August 9, 2012 at 12:23am

The anti-vacciners I run into tend to be Religious Right Wing nuts..

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Permalink Reply by Nate Townsend on August 10, 2012 at 12:31am

It is possible that atheism is in some cases just as faith based as a religion would be. At the same time, it requires a whole heck of a lot more effort to continue to say “No” when saying “Yes” is so much more popular. Even further beyond that, there are a great many people who just can’t be bothered to care about the religious debate and just want everyone involved to just stfu and get on with their lives.