Atheism Quotes - Page 33

• As the astronomer rejoices in new knowledge which compels him to give up the dignity of our globe as the centre, the pride, and even the final cause of the universe, so do those who have escaped from the Christian mythology enjoy their release from the superstition which fails to make them happy, fails to make them good, fails to make them wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies which it took the place of two thousand years ago.

  Harriet Martineau

  Wise, Christian, Giving Up

  Harriet Martineau (1877). “Harriet Martineau's autobiography, with memorials by M.W. Chapman”, p.356

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• I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.

  Harriet Martineau

  Superstitions, Next, Orthodoxy

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.568, Broadview Press

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• I hope and believe my co-religionists understand and admit that I disclaim their theology in toto, and that by no twisting of language or darkening of its meanings can I be made to have any thing whatever in common with them about religious matters... they must take my word for it that there is nothing in common between their theology and my philosophy.

  Harriet Martineau

  Religious, Philosophy, Believe

  Harriet Martineau (2015). “Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (Vol. I: Abridged, Annotated)”, p.101, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• The clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question.

  Harriet Martineau

  Book, Miracle, Complaining

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.233

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• My business in life has been to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have thought and learned. The freedom is itself a positive and never-failing enjoyment to me, after the bondage of my early life.

  Harriet Martineau

  Thinking, Speaks Out, Failing

  Harriet Martineau (2015). “Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (Vol. I: Abridged, Annotated)”, p.85, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• The lesson taught us by these kindly commentators on my present experience is that dogmatic faith compels the best minds and hearts to narrowness and insolence.

  Harriet Martineau

  Heart, Taught Us, Mind

  Harriet Martineau, Linda H. Peterson (2007). “Autobiography”, Broadview Pr

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• My own feeling of concern arises from seeing how much moral injury and suffering is created by the superstitions of the Christian mythology.

  Harriet Martineau

  Christian, Feelings, Suffering

  Harriet Martineau, Maria Weston Chapman (2010). “Harriet Martineau's Autobiography”, p.444, Cambridge University Press

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• I certainly never believed, more or less, in the "essential doctrines" of Christianity, which represent God as the predestinator of men to sin and perdition, and Christ as their rescuer from that doom. I never was more or less behuiled by the trickery of language by which the perdition of man is made out to be justice, and his redemption to be mercy.

  Harriet Martineau

  Men, Justice, Essentials

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.60, Broadview Press

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• Many books have been written to show that Christianity has emasculated the world, that it shoved aside the enlightenment and wisdom of Hellas for a doctrine of superstition and ignorance.

  Edgar Lee Masters

  Book, Ignorance, Enlightenment

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• The Typical American? He is sent to school Little or much, where he imbibes the rule Of safety first and comfort; in his youth He joins the church and ends the quest of truth.

  Edgar Lee Masters

  School, Safety, Church

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• I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.149, Diversion Books

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• The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Ineffable, Mystic, Unspeakable

  The Moon and Sixpence Ch. 1

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• What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Self, Democracy, Doe

  W. Somerset Maugham (1939). “Christmas Holiday”

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• Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, Needs, World

  W. Somerset Maugham (2009). “Christmas Holiday”, p.228, Random House

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• The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Artist, Criminals, Limits

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• The arguments for immortality, weak when you take them one by one, are no more cogent when you take them together... For my part, I cannot see how consciousness can persist when its physical basis has been destroyed, and I am too sure of the interconnection of my body and my mind to think that any survival of my my consciousness apart from my body would be in any sense a survival of myself.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Thinking, Survival, Mind

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• Now the answer ... is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, Answers, Faces

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• I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death's own hand is warmer than my own. I don't wish to live any longer.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Sadness, Hands, Sick

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• If a single one of these gentlemen is correct, if a believer of any type is right, the essential truth for man, the real drama of life, in comparison with which the secular story of the race, is a puppet-show and the unfolding of the universe is a triviality, is the dialogue of the immortal soul and the eternal God. Yet it seems that there is nothing in the world so hard to discover as this. The theory refutes itself.

  Joseph McCabe

  Real, Drama, Men

  "The Psychology of Religion". Book by Joseph McCabe, 1927.

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• The absence of theistic belief...

  Joseph McCabe

  Belief, Absence

  "A Rationalist Encyclopaedia: A Book of Reference on Religion, Philosophy, Ethics, and Science". Book by Joseph McCabe, 1948.

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• Evolution throws a wonderful light on all the struggles, eccentricities, tortuous developments of the human conscience in the past. It is the only theory of morals that does. And evolution throws just as much light on the ethical and social struggle today; and it is the only theory that does. What a strange age ours is from the religious point of view! What a hopeless age from the philosopher's point of view! Yet it is a very good age, the best that ever was. No evolutionist is a pessimist.

  Joseph McCabe

  Religious, Struggle, Past

  "The Human Origin of Morals". Book by Joseph McCabe, 1926.

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• Heaven is supposed to be a perfect place. Yet, it experienced a war (Revelation 12:7). How can there be a war in a perfect place and if it happened before why couldn't it happen again? Why would I want to go to a place in which war can occur? That's exactly what I'm trying to escape, aren't you?

  Dennis McKinsey

  War, Perfect, Heaven

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• It is naïve to suppose that the acceptance of evolution theory depends upon the evidence of a number of so-called "proofs"; it depends rather upon the fact that the evolutionary theory permeates and supports every branch of biological science, much as the notion of the roundness of the earth underlies all geodesy and all cosmological theories on which the shape of the earth has a bearing. Thus antievolutionism is of the same stature as flat-earthism.

  Peter Medawar

  Acceptance, Numbers, Support

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• To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive. Religious beliefs give a spurious spiritual dimension to tribal enmities.

  Peter Medawar

  Spiritual, Religious, Giving

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• It goes with the passionate intensity and deep conviction of the truth of a religious belief, and of course of the importance of the superstitious observances that go with it, that we should want others to share it - and the only certain way to cause a religious belief to be held by everyone is to liquidate nonbelievers. The price in blood and tears that mankind generally has had to pay for the comfort and spiritual refreshment that religion has brought to a few has been too great to justify our entrusting moral accountancy to religious belief.

  Peter Medawar

  Spiritual, Religious, Blood

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.210, Oxford University Press, USA

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