Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 29

• Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason, that if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Thinking, Atheism, Church

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1874). “The Gods, and Other Lectures”, p.183

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• In the presence of death I affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world. I would say that much on the subject with my last breath.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Atheism, World, Superstitions

  Robert Green Ingersoll, Herman Eugene Kittredge (1909). “The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll”

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• He stripped off the armor of institutional friendships To dedictate his soul To the terrible deities of Truth and Beauty.

  Edgar Lee Masters

  Soul, Atheism, Armor

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• Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Lying, Men, Average

  'Vildanden' (The Wild Duck, 1884) act 5

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• It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing raveled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Atheism, Doctrine, Looks

  Henrik Ibsen (1904). “Ghosts: An Enemy of the People : The Wild Duck”

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• I'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Lying, Elderly, Gentleman

  Henrik Ibsen (1960). “The Oxford Ibsen: An enemy of the people. The wild duck. Rosmersholm”

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• An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other to his advantage.

  Karl Jaspers

  Self, Ideas, Deception

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• We want to be masters of our own destiny. We need no Gods or Emperors. We do not believe in the existence of any saviour. We want to be masters of the world and not instruments used by autocrats to carry out their wild ambitions. We want a modern lifestyle and democracy for the people. Freedom and happiness are our sole objectives in accomplishing modernisation.

  Wei Jingsheng

  Believe, Ambition, Destiny

  "Ai Weiwei: the dissident artist" by Hari Kunzru, www.theguardian.com. May 27, 2011.

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• There are those who feel an imperative need to believe, for whom the values of a belief are proportionate not to its truth, but to its definiteness. Incapable of either admitting the existence of contrary judgments or of suspending their own, they supply the place of knowledge by turning other men's conjectures into dogmas.

  C. E. M. Joad

  Believe, Men, Atheism

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• All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Atheism, Belief, Argument

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 31 Mar. 1778)

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• Are there not thousands who have loved virtue who did not accept Jesus Christ in any supernatural or miraculous fashion, who, if they knew of him at all, knew of him only as the Nazarene peasant - the man Jesus. Such was Abraham Lincoln, the tender prophet of the gospel of good will upon earth.

  Jenkin Lloyd Jones

  Fashion, Jesus, Men

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• I myself am not comfortable with the notion of secularists congregating in groups, except perhaps for defensive purposes: the last thing a secularist should wish to do is to act like a religion, with its rigid hierarchies, its suppression of divergent opinion, and, above all, its ruthless attempts (now mercifully inhibited by laws) to outlaw "heresy" by brute force. Opinions must be changed, one at a time if necessary, but if there are those who wish to persist in religious belief, they should certainly be allowed to do so.

  S. T. Joshi

  Religious, Law, Wish

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• The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should insist on the need to engage in a meaningful debate on the entire issue of the truth or falsity (or probability or improbability) of religious tenets, without being subject to accusations of impiety, immorality, impoliteness, or any of the other smokescreens used by the pious to deflect attention from the central issues at hand.

  S. T. Joshi

  Meaningful, Religious, Atheist

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• Broken heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets bunged up and there you are... Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you are dead.

  James Joyce

  Heart, Blood, Broken

  James Joyce (2013). “The Best of James Joyce”, p.462, Simon and Schuster

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• And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a Jew like me. And so was his father.

  James Joyce

  Jesus, Father, Atheism

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• I confess that I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul.

  James Joyce

  Soul, Atheism, Doe

  James Joyce (1959). “Critical writings”

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• I don't spend much time thinking about whether God exists. I don't consider that a relevant question. It's unanswerable and irrelevant to my life, so I put it in the category of things I can't worry about.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Thinking, Worry, Atheism

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• In this climate - with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace - making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Fun, Angel, Atheism

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• When the inner child finds a guardian angel, publishers are in heaven.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Children, Angel, Heaven

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• It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Intellectual, Atheism, Matter

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• It's easy to sell good news like this, and the authors confidently rely on classic fallacious arguments. They argue by declaration, which is what makes the books so amusing. In matter-of-fact, authoritative tones, the authors tell us how plants and human beings exchange energy - or they describe what angels look like, whether or how they're sexed, how they communicate with human beings, and how they differ from ghosts. Readers might be expected to wonder, How do they know?

  Wendy Kaminer

  Book, Angel, Atheism

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• Reason must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions which he has himself formulated.

  Immanuel Kant

  Teacher, Character, Order

  Immanuel Kant (2013). “Immanuel Kant's Critique Of Pure Reason”, p.21, Read Books Ltd

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• Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.

  Immanuel Kant

  Religious, Men, Thinking

  "German Thought, From The Seven Years' War To Goethe's Death : Six Lectures" by Karl Hillebrand, (p. 208), 1880.

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• Reason can never prove the existence of God.

  Immanuel Kant

  Atheism, Reason, Existence

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• The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

  Immanuel Kant

  Light, Air, Space

  Immanuel Kant (1995). “Kant”, Element Books

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