Atheism Quotes - Page 35

• As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.

  C. Wright Mills

  World, Variables, Doe

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• The liberty of conscience, which above all other things ought to be to all men dearest and most precious.

  John Milton

  Men, Liberty, Ought

  John Milton (2012). “John Milton Prose: Major Writings on Liberty, Politics, Religion, and Education”, p.680, John Wiley & Sons

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• Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

  John Milton

  Men, Good Man, Opinion

  'Areopagitica' (1644) p. 31

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• For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.

  John Milton

  Strong, Errors, Needs

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• It is criminal negligence to leave suckers lying around to tempt honest men.

  Wilson Mizner

  Lying, Men, Criminals

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• Today, the religion clauses of the First Amendment do not need to be fixed; they need to be followed.

  Walter F. Mondale

  Today, Firsts, Needs

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• The Queen of England is Defender of the Faith but the President of the United States is Defender of the Constitution, which defends all faiths.

  Walter F. Mondale

  Queens, President, England

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• Whatever his private beliefs and religious practice, a president must be the guardian of the laws which ensure America's religious diversity.

  Walter F. Mondale

  Religious, Law, Practice

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• He was extremely reticent in his religious sentiments, at least in all that he wrote. Allusions to his belief are rarely, if ever, to be met with in his correspondence.

  Daniel Coit Gilman

  Religious, Belief, Mets

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• Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Christian, Simple, Men

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• It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick; and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Lying, Sticks, Witch

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• Death pays all debts.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Death, Pay, Debt

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• Religion is the venereal disease of mankind.

  Henry de Montherlant

  Disease, Mankind, Positive Atheism

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• There is a broad distinction between religion and theology. The one is a natural, human experience common to all well-organized minds. The other is a system of speculations about the unseen and the unknowable, which the human mind has no power to grasp or explain, and these speculations vary with every sect, age, and type of civilization. No one knows any more of what lies beyond our sphere of action than thou and I, and we know nothing.

  Lucretia Mott

  Lying, Civilization, Organized Mind

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• Science remains the author of our major problem, in its gift of tremendous power that has been terribly abused; but for the wise use of this power we need more, not less, of the objective dispassionate scientific spirit. For our philosophical purposes we need more of its integrity and its basic humility, its respect at once for the fact and the mystery.

  Herbert J. Muller

  Wise, Integrity, Philosophical

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• The First Crusade ... set off on its two-thousand-mile jaunt by massacring Jews, plundering and slaughtering all the way from the Rhine to the Jordan. "In the temple of Solomon," wrote the ecstatic cleric Raimundus de Agiles, "one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses" bridles, by the just and marvelous judgment of God.

  Herbert J. Muller

  Horse, Blood, Two

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• Religion can no longer rest its claims on a dogmatic supernaturalism, because any dogma that is irreconcilable with tested knowledge must be rejected... One sentence ... sums up the dark and deadly pages of Chistian history: "If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities."

  Herbert J. Muller

  Believe, Dark, Pages

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• The right to religious freedom has its foundation, not in the church or society or the state, but in the very dignity of the human person.

  John Courtney Murray

  Religious, Church, Foundation

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• The neighborhood children, of course, were forbidden by their parents to play with my little boy, Garth, so I finally got him a little kitten to play with. A couple of weeks later we found it on the porch with its neck wrung.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Couple, Children, Boys

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• Intolerance has always been one of the cornerstones of Christianity - the glorious heritage of the Inquisition.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Heritage, Christianity, Intolerance

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• We wish our Christian brothers would be honest and permit us our heroes. We do not deny them theirs.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Christian, Brother, Hero

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1972). “What on Earth Is an Atheist!”, Arno Press

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• Actually, I don't like Atheists very much - at least most of them ~ because they are not motivated to move into the community and attempt to correct the injustices which are everywhere apparent against them.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Atheist, Moving, Community

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• Religion, society and state - from none of these do women get their proper honor. It is religion, which has created an unparalleled disparity between men and women.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Men, Honor, Religion

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• I dont agree with those who think that the conflict is simply between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam... To me, the key conflict is between irrational blind faith and rational, logical minds.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Thinking, Keys, Two

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• I am an atheist. I do not believe in prayers, I believe in work. And my work is that of an author. My pen is my weapon.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Atheist, Prayer, Believe

  "One Brave Woman vs. Religious Fundamentalism: An Interview With Taslima Nasrin". Free Inquiry interview, www.secularhumanism.org. December 1, 1998.

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