Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 27

• The universal cosmic process was not created by any god or man.

  Heraclitus

  Men, Atheism, Process

  11 Copy quote

• Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

  Frank Herbert

  Adventure, Errors, Atheism

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Children of Dune”, p.275, Penguin

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. The judgmental precedents of law function that way, littering your path with dead ends. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary.

  Frank Herbert

  Law, Understanding, Over You

  Frank Herbert (1987). “Chapterhouse: Dune”, p.166, Penguin

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• "Atheist" is quite clear in its meaning of "somebody without a belief in God." It is more complex in its usage since it has often been used to blacken anyone with the slightest doubt about the teachings of religion.

  Jim Herrick

  Atheist, Teaching, Doubt

  Jim Herrick (1985). “Against the Faith: Essays on Deists, Skeptics, and Atheists”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• "Agnostic" is a much more recent word than "atheist", coined by Thomas Huxley in 1869 to mean "without knowledge of God" and acquiring the usage of "being doubtful about the existence of God."

  Jim Herrick

  Atheist, Mean, Atheism

  Jim Herrick (1985). “Against the Faith: Essays on Deists, Skeptics, and Atheists”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I remember thee in days to come, O Jerusalem, it will not be with pleasure. The musty deposits of 2,000 years of inhumanity, intolerance, and uncleanliness lie in the foul-smelling alleys... The amiable dreamer of Nazareth has only contributed to increasing the hatred... What superstition and fanaticism on every side!

  Theodor Herzl

  Lying, Years, Hatred

  23 Copy quote

• A drawing, brought by Colonel Coombs, from a sculptured column in a cave-temple in the South of India, represents the first pair at the foot of the ambrosial tree, and a serpent entwined among the heavily-laden boughs, presenting to them some of the fruit from his mouth.

  Godfrey Higgins

  Drawing, Feet, Tree

  4 Copy quote

• The utter folly of our time is lamentable, that men should think to assist God with human help and to protect the Church of Christ by worldly ambition.

  Hilary of Poitiers

  Ambition, Men, Thinking

  33 Copy quote

• Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, superstition.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Mind, Atheism, Superstitions

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil”, p.41, Simon and Schuster

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Atheism, Facts, Ends

  Thomas Hobbes (1750). “The Moral and Political Works To which is Prefixed the Autors Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself ... Illustr. by the Ed. - London 1750”, p.122

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Curiosity draws a man from consideration of the effect, to seek the cause.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Curiosity, Atheism

  Thomas Hobbes (2015). “Leviathan”, p.122, Xist Publishing

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a Democracy, look how many Demagogs that is how many powerful Orators there are with the people.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Powerful, People, Democracy

  7 Copy quote

• Heresy is a word which, when it is used without passion, signifies a private opinion. So the different sects of the old philosophers, Academians, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, &c., were called heresies.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Passion, Atheism, Different

  Thomas Hobbes (1840). “The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Dialogue between a philosopher and a student of the common laws in England. Behemoth: The history of the causes of the civil wars of England. The whole art of rhetoric. The art of rhetoric, plainly set forth. The art of sophistry”, p.174

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Atheism, Purpose

  Thomas Hobbes, Richard Tuck (1996). “Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised Student Edition”, p.473, Cambridge University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Immortality is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings, that they knew it supernaturally; or that they knew those who knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Men, Atheism, Belief

  25 Copy quote

• I shall be glad then to find a hole to creep out of the world.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Atheism, World, Holes

  Thomas Hobbes (1812). “The treatise on human nature and that on liberty and necessity. With a suppl. to which is prefixed an account of his life and writings by the editor [P. Mallet].”, p.66

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The ignorant are a reservoir of daring. It almost seems that those who have yet to discover the known are particularly equipped for dealing with the unknown. The unlearned have often rushed in where the learned feared to tread, and it is the credulous who are tempted to attempt the impossible. They know not whither they are going, and give chance a chance.

  Eric Hoffer

  Giving, Ignorant, Atheism

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many men without morals have attacked religion because it was contrary to their inclinations. Many wise men have despised it because it seemed to them ridiculous. Many persons have regarded it with indifference, because they have never felt its true disadvantages. But it is as a citizen that I attack it, because it seems to me harmful to the happiness of the state, hostile to the march of the mind of man, and contrary to sound morality, from which the interests of state policy can never be separated.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Wise, Men, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• If the ministers of the Church have often permitted nations to revolt for Heaven's cause, they never allowed them to revolt against real evils or known violencess. It is from Heaven that the chains have come to fetter the minds of mortals.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Real, Evil, Heaven

  Paul Henri Thiry, baron d' Holbach (2012). “Superstition In All Ages (1732) Common Sense”, p.197, tredition

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don't say anything about this to anybody. Any one would say that I am trying to play the good-natured philosopher. I am neither benefactor nor philosopher, but just a human being, and my charities are the pleasantest expense I have on these journeys.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Journey, Play, Say Anything

  8 Copy quote

• The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of man ... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Fall, Men, Atheism

  6 Copy quote

• If I could have my way I would place the Deity on half-pay as the Government of this Country did the subaltern officers.

  George Holyoake

  Country, Government, Atheism

  6 Copy quote

• Anybody can see that the little money you get is half-wasted, because you cannot spend it to advantage. The worst food comes to the poor, which their poverty makes them buy and their necessity makes them eat. Their stomachs are the waste-basket of the State. It is their lot to swallow all the adulterations on the market.

  George Holyoake

  Atheism, Half, Littles

  6 Copy quote

• Religious tolerance has developed more as a consequence of the impotence of religions to impose their dogmas on each other than as a consequence of spiritual humility in the quest for understanding first and last things.

  Sidney Hook

  Spiritual, Religious, Humility

  9 Copy quote

• To deny me the right to err is therefore to deny me the right to believe.

  Sidney Hook

  Believe, Atheism, Deny

  4 Copy quote