Atheist Quotes - Page 27

• If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we are not sure whether or not God wrote some of our books, then we need only count the days to Armageddon-because God has given us far many more reasons to kill one another than to turn the other cheek.

  Sam Harris

  Book, Way, Needs

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.35, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor.

  James Thurber

  Eye, Doctors, Bishops

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• Our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-theother-dog's-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent's arguments to change the opponent's mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog's tail to wag by moving it with your hand will make the dog happy.

  Sam Harris

  Dog, Moving, Believe

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• Turn pimp, flatterer, quack, lawyer, parson, be chaplain to an atheist, or stallion to an old woman, anything but a poet; for a poet is worse, more servile, timorous and fawning than any I have named.

  William Congreve

  Pimp, Atheism, Lawyer

  William Congreve (1785). “Love for Love: A Comedy”, p.8

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• Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.

  John Locke

  Promise, Atheism, Covenant

  John Locke, David Wootton (1993). “Locke: Political Writings”, p.426, Hackett Publishing

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• Are you grown an atheist? Will you turn your body, Which is the goodly palace of the soul, To the soul's slaughter-house? Oh, the curse'  d devil, Which doth present us with all other sins Thrice-candied o'er.

  John Webster

  House, Soul, Devil

  1612 The White Devil, act 5, sc.6.

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• Government has no Right to hurt a hair of the head of an Atheist, for his Opinions. Let him have a care of his Practices.

  John Adams

  Hurt, Hair, Government

  John Adams' Letter to John Quincy Adams, founders.archives.gov. June 16, 1816.

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• I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker.

  Richard Steele

  Atheism, Titles, Deist

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Alexander Chalmers (1822). “The Tatler”, p.199

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• If there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?

  Voltaire

  Tyrants, Soul, Atheism

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• I'm an atheist .I was raised in British reform Judaism, which is not like American reform Judaism, much less any other strain of organised religion. So: no cults here.

  Charles Stross

  Reform, British, Judaism

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• The zeal of atheists is the most admirable thing about them.

  Dale Ahlquist

  Admirable, Zeal

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• The great tragedy of atheists is that they walk through this world and have no one to thank.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Tragedy, World, Walks

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• I've won every debate I've had with an atheist, and never converted even a single one.

  Francis Joseph Sheed

  Debate

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• The atheist barista (who's obsessed with astrology) asked me, "So what's your sign?" I responded, "The sign of the cross." I think she spit in my coffee.

  Mark Hart

  Coffee, Thinking, Astrology

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• He only is a true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being - for example, love, wisdom and justice - are nothing.

  Ludwig Feuerbach

  Justice, Example, Divine

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• The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good." This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Real, Believe, Long

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• God knows, I'm not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be Just for a screen.

  Robert Burns

  Twenties, Would Be, Clean

  Robert Burns, James Currie (1847). “Works: With an Account of His Life and Criticism on His Writings, to which are Prefixed Some Observations on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry”, p.131

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• When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist, or an idealist; a Christian, or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.

  Thomas Huxley

  Christian, Art, Maturity

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays”, p.237, tredition

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• I have a great respect for the flag, (but) if the government passed a law saying that I had to pledge allegiance to the flag, I don't think I would do it. I've always felt that I lived in a country...where if I wanted to worship God as a Baptist, I could do so. If I were an atheist, I could be one. If I wanted to be a Catholic but was born a Jew, there's no condemnation...from a government authority.

  Jimmy Carter

  Country, Thinking, Government

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• The list of things about which we strictly have to be agnostic doesn't stop at tooth fairies and celestial teapots. It is infinite. If you want to believe in a particular one of them - teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh - the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Want, Lists

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• Richard Dawkins says he can't be sure God doesn't exist. Well, you know what I do when I'm not sure about something? I go on a big crusade about it and write a bunch of books on the subject. No, wait, that sounds more like what someone with a mental disorder would do. That's one of the crazy things about lots of atheists: They're whole movement is supposed to be about being logical and reasonable, yet they tend to rail against religion is a very mindless way that doesn't seem to serve any more purpose than a tantrum. Perhaps I just don't understand their strong faith in not having faith.

  Frank J. Fleming

  Strong, Crazy, Book

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• So when people tell you, oh, you can't have the Ten Commandments on public property, they're just wrong. It's historically false. It's not true. Now, you can decide to invent a new America in which you shouldn't say "one nation under God" as part of the pledge because, after all, you will offend three atheists. But that's not the America you inherited. That's a different country. And I think it's a weaker country and I think it's a country that has no roots in terms of where its rights come from.

  Newt Gingrich

  Country, Thinking, America

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• Armstrong lives as he rides - surrounded by a cocoon of aides and helpers, his gimlet eyes focused on victory.... The self-described atheist has become a deity... but the inquiry's findings may cause the Armstrong faithful to ask, Was the miracle a mirage?

  Selena Roberts

  Eye, Self, Miracle

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• An ethical atheist is infinitely more valuable than an unethical pious! What matters is whether you are ethical or not; your beliefs are utterly trivial beside this matter!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  What Matters, Belief, Ethical

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• I can never be an atheist, because God is our celestial hope for our existential worries, our cosmic chance against absurdity!" MMI

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Worry, Chance, Existential

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