Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 14

• The images evoked by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of an electric bell that calls them up.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Independent, People, Atheism

  Gustave Le Bon (1947). “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind”, p.57, Lulu.com

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• The influence of the leaders is due in very small measure to the arguments they employ, but in a large degree to their prestige. The best proof of this is that, should they by any circumstance lose their prestige, their influence disappears.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Leader, Atheism, Degrees

  Gustave Le Bon (2012). “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind”, p.126, Courier Corporation

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• Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Thinking, Atheism, Matter

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• Man has learned to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Men, Atheism, Hypothesis

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• There is no more harm in adultery than in rubbing one's hands together.

  Pope Boniface VIII

  Hands, Atheism, Together

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• The Christian test was a willingness to believe in the one Jesus Christ and His Message of salvation. What was demanded was not criticism but credulity. The Church Fathers observed that in the realm of thought only heresy had a history.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Christian, Jesus, Father

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2011). “The Discoverers”, p.572, Vintage

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• Liberty's chief foe is theology.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Atheism, Liberty, Chiefs

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• I do not deny "God", because that word conveys to me no idea, and I cannot deny that which presents to me no distinct affirmation, and of which the would-be affirmer has no conception.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Ideas, Atheism, Would Be

  Charles Bradlaugh (1875). “A Few Words About the Devil: And Other Biographical Sketches and Essays”, p.263, Library of Alexandria

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• Atheism is without God. It does not assert no God.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Atheism, Doe, Without God

  "Letters", reason.com. February 1976.

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• The ameliorating march of the last few centuries has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the pious of one century are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of a later generation.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Men, Atheism, Age

  Charles Bradlaugh (1889). “Theological Essays”, p.119, Library of Alexandria

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• No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion die; dead religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs: the decay is long and - like the glacier march - is perceptible only to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long periods.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Long, People, Atheism

  Marsden Gibson, Charles Bradlaugh (1889*). “Has Humanity Gained from Unbelief?: Two Nights Debate Between Marsden Gibson and Charles Bradlaugh at Newcastle-on-Tyne”

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• A mere society form of Atheism.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Atheism, Form, Mere

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• Heresy makes for progress.

  Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner

  Progress, Atheism, Heresy

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• It is a curious paradox of human history that a doctrine that tells human beings to regard themselves as sacrificial animals has been accepted as a doctrine representing benevolence and love for mankind.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Animal, Atheism, And Love

  Nathaniel Branden (1985). “Honoring the Self”, Bantam

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• It is important to bear in mind the now commonly accepted fact that in its primitive stages, religion had nothing to do with morals as understood by us today.

  James Henry Breasted

  Mind, Important, Atheism

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• Man arose to high moral vision two thousand years before the Hebrew nation was born.

  James Henry Breasted

  Men, Years, Two

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• The public schools are supported entirely, in most communities, by public funds-funds exacted not only from parents, nor alone from those who hold particular religious views, nor indeed from those who subscribe to any creed at all.

  William J. Brennan

  Religious, School, Views

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• The modern public school derived from a philosophy of freedom reflected in the First Amendment ... The non-sectarian or secular public school was the means of reconciling freedom in general with religious freedom.

  William J. Brennan

  Religious, Philosophy, School

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• It is often said that the progression from simple to complex runs counter to the normal statistics of chance that are formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Strictly speaking, we could avoid this criticism simply by insisting that the Second Law does not apply to living systems in the environment in which we find them. For the Second Law applies only when there is no overall flow of energy into or out of a system, whereas all living systems are sustained by a net inflow of energy.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Running, Simple, Law

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• Education teaches people how to think, while propaganda teaches people what to think.

  James A.C. Brown

  Thinking, People, Atheism

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• Propaganda by censorship takes two forms: the selective control of information to favour a particular viewpoint, and the deliberate doctoring of information in order to create an impression different from that originally intended.

  James A.C. Brown

  Order, Two, Atheism

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• As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine; methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith.

  Thomas Browne

  Brain, Atheism, Divinity

  'Religio Medici' (1643) pt. 1, sect. 9

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• The candid incline to surmise of late that the Christian faith proves false.

  Robert Browning

  Christian, Atheism, Candid

  Richard Cronin, Robert Browning, Dorothy McMillan (2015). “Robert Browning”, p.391, Oxford University Press, USA

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• 'Tis well averred, A scientific faith's absurd.

  Robert Browning

  Atheism, Absurd, Wells

  'Easter-Day' (1850) l. 123

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• Mothers, wives and maids, These be the tools with which priests manage men.

  Robert Browning

  Mother, Men, Wife

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