Quotes About Religion

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. – James Madison

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it. – John Adams

Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies. – Thomas Jefferson

Man is a marvelous curiosity…he thinks he is the Creator’s pet…he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea. – Mark Twain

All thinking men are atheists. – Ernest Hemingway

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him. – Arthur C. Clarke

A man is not moral because he is obedient through fear or ignorance. Morality lives in the realm of perceived obligation… – Robert Ingersoll

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. – Karl Marx

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. – George Bernard Shaw

Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. – Isaac Asimov

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. – Richard Dawkins

“The time for respecting religous beliefs of that sort has long past”-Sam Harris at Idea City 05

“Thou shalt not take anything on faith”-Penn Jillette

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
— Stephen Roberts

“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.”
— unknown

“Only Sheep need a shepherd!”
— unknown

“God is not dead. He is alive and working on a much less ambitious project.”
— graffito (1975), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

“Appraise the Lord: Tax church property.”
— bumper sticker

“Humanity without religion is like a serial killer without a chainsaw.”
— unknown

“Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.”
–Don Hirschberg

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”
–Denis Diderot

“The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.”
— Denis Diderot

“the trouble with theocracy is that everyone wants to be Theo.”
— James Dunn

“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”
–Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor (1769-1821).

“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.”
–Ferdinand Magellan, (1480–1521), Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Straits of Magellan 1520 and the Philippines 1521.

“Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.”
— Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Roman Catholic philosopher

“Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, it’s just god when he’s drunk.”
— Tom Waits

“An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.”
— John Buchan

“The atheist does not say ‘there is no God,’ but he says ‘I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God’; the word ‘God’ is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. … The Bible God I deny; the Christian God I disbelieve in; but I am not rash enough to say there is no God as long as you tell me you are unprepared to define God to me.”
— Charles Bradlaugh, ‘Plea for Atheism’

Eskimo: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?”
Priest: “No, not if you did not know.”
Eskimo: “Then why did you tell me?”
— Annie Dillard, ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’

“I give money for church organs in the hope the organ music will distract the congregation’s attention from the rest of the service.”
— Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

“Gods always behave like the people who created them”
— Zora Neale Hurston

“Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.”
— Chapman Cohen

“Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.”
— Ambrose Bierce

“I still say a church steeple with a lightening rod on top shows a lack of confidence.”
— Doug McLeod

“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”
— H. L. Mencken

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfuly as when they do it for religious convictions”
— Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

“Man has never been the same since God died. He has taken it very hard.”
— unknown

“The world holds two classes of men – intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.”
— Abu Ala Al-Ma’arri (???? – 1059)

“No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.”
–Annie Wood Besant (1847-1933)

“Hey, let’s get serious… God knows what he’s doin’ He wrote this book here And the book says: ‘He made us all to be just like Him’, So… If we’re dumb… Then God is dumb… (And maybe even a little ugly on the side)”
– -Frank Zappa

“God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.”
— Rousseau

“You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do.”
–[from Usenet]

“Atheism is a non-prophet organization”
— unknown

“Organizing atheists is like hurding cats”
— Madalyn Murray O’Hair

“In the absence of fear there is little faith.”
— Michael Pain

“If atheists are deaf to the word of God, then theists are blind to the ways of man.”
— Michael Pain

“You’ll never find a dead Christian in a foxhole who didn’t pray.”
— unnknown

“On the sixth day, God created man. On the seventh day, man returned the favor.”
— unknown

“Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.”
— unknown

“For god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son,
that whosoever would believe in him would believe in anything.”
— unknown

“Theists think all gods but theirs are false. Atheists simply don’t make an exception for the last one.”
— unknown

“Fundamentalism means never having to say ‘I’m wrong.'”
— unknown

“Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day;
Give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish”
— unknown

“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?”
— Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith