"Men who believe absurdities will commit atrocities."
Voltaire
"The bible teaches that women brought sin and death into the world. I don't believe that any man ever talked with god. The bible was written by man out of his love of domination."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815-
"The hideous doctrine of eternal torment after death has probably caused more terror and misery, more cruelty and more violation of natural human sympathy, than any religious belief in the history of mankind. Yet this doctrine was unambiguously taught by Jesus."
Margaret Knight - lecturer - Aberdeen University
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
Blaise Pascal 1623-1662
"The Jews, Muslims and Christians got it all wrong. The people of the world only divide into two kinds: one sort with brains and no religion, the other with religion and no brains."
Abul Al Mali, Syrian poet 1095-
"Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom."
Lenin
"Civilised men arrived in the Pacific armed with alcohol, syphilis, trousers and the Bible."
Havelock Ellis 1859-1877
"The hideous doctrine of eternal torment after death has probably caused more terror and misery, more cruelty and more violation of natural human sympathy than any other religious belief in the history of mankind. Yet this doctrine was taught unambiguously by Jesus."
Thomas Paine
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
Denis Dioderot 1713-1784
"With soap, baptism is a good thing."
Robert G. Ingersoll 1833-1899
"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."
John Buchan 1875-1940
"Absolute atheism starts in an act of faith in reverse gear and is a full-blown religious commitment."
J. Maritain 1882-
"The reasonable man adapts to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
GeorgeBernard Shaw
"Nothing in the world delights a truly religious people so much as consigning them to eternal damnation."
James Hogg 1770-1835
"Their sighin', cantin', grace-proud faces, Their three-mile prayers and half-mile graces."
Robert Burns 1759-1796
"Women are born worshippers."
Thomas Carlyle 1795-1881
"After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands."
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900
"Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity."
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature... It is the opium of the people."
Carl Marx 1818-1883
"The church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down."
Robert G. Ingersoll 1833-1899
“My religious superstition gave place to rational ideas based on scientific facts, and in proportion as I looked at everything from a new standpoint, I grew more happy day by day...
Only those who have lived all their lives under the dark clouds of vague, undefined fears can appreciate the joy of a doubting soul suddenly born into the kingdom of reason and free thought.
I view it as one of the greatest crimes to shadow the minds of the young with these gloomy superstitions, and with fears of the unknown and the unknowable to poison all their joy in life.”
(Three quotes by) Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815-
"All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few."
Stendhall 1783-1842
"Formal religion was organised for slaves: it offered them consolation which earth did not provide."
Elbert Hubbard 1856-1915
"God is no respecter of persons."
(Saint) Peter 1-67
"Religion - A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."
Ambose Bierce 1842-1914
"A comprehended God is no God."
St. John Chrysotom 345-407
"I am sure this Jesus will not do, either for Englishman or Jew."
William Blake 1757-1827
If God made us in his image, we have certainly returned the compliment."
Voltaire 1694-1778
"Men make gods in their own likeness."
Aldous Huxley 1894-1953
"If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides."
Charles de Montesquieu 1689-1755
"Women give themselves to God when the devil wants nothing more to do with them."
Sophie Arnould 1744-1802
"Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect."
George Santayana 1863-1952
"People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightilly inclined to believe themselves citizens of another."
George Santayana 1863-1953
"Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government."
Bertrand Russell 1872-
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism."
Sir William Osler 1849-1919
"Dogmatism is puppyism come to its full growth."
Douglas Jerrold 1803-1857
Faith is defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H.L. Mencken
It was a schoolboy who said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
Mark Twain
Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate.
F.M. Knowles
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.
Miguel De Unamuno
Faith is not wanting to know what is true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
R.W. Emerson
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
Michel De Montaigne
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
Michel De Montaigne
"Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy."
John Dewey
Someone along the corridor dislikes me and he keeps pushing mice under my door, so you see, I'm under mouse arrest.
Quentin Crisp
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
Bertrand Russell
"Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe"
H.G. Wells
An immoral god - a hangover from stone age minds - still corrupts human mentality with its scapegoat justice and the threat of eternal damnation.
(Reverend) Reginald Howard Bass
'The History of Natural Religion'
The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness.
Martin Esslin
I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.
Leo Rosten
The great god Ra, whose shrine once covered acres, is filler now for crossword puzzles.
Keith Preston
"My only policy is to profess evil and do good."
George Bernard Shaw
All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland, please raise your right hands.
Attributed to Saint Patrick, though I have my doubts
It is the task of science to reduce deep truths to trivialities.
Niels Bohr
Sometimes when the laws are so cruel, so dangerous and so bad, one has to make a stand.
Australian solicitor, John Marsden, commenting on his arrest in 1967 for improper behaviour in a public place.
Puritanism is jealousy wearing a halo.
H.L. Mencken
It is the most unpopular ideas that deserve to be protected because the popular ideas can take care of themselves. It is the minority views that the majority might not agree with that are the heart of democracy.
Hugh Hefner
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Albert Einstein
Auto-eroticism soon ceases to be what it is for most people - an admitted substitute for intercourse. It is sexual intercourse which becomes the substitute - and a poor one - for masturbation.
Quentin Crisp
You have not converted a man just because you have silenced him.
John Morley
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
Goethe
Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.
Milton
"Nowadays we have access to lots more silliness, much faster, and in full colour."
James Randy
“I sit alone on the rock of my own individuality, with the waves of superstition and religious tyranny surging around me."
Josephine K. Henry
• “Nothing grows slower than truth, and nothing faster than superstition.”
• “The first thing for people to do is to get rid of the silly notion that there is anything holy in the name of Jesus any more than in the name of Hercules, Bacchus, or Adonis.”
• “Above all, teach children that prayer is idiotic. There may be one God or twenty. I do not know or care.”
• “We are living in the Twentieth Century of what is called the Christian Era, and we have not outgrown the superstitions of the First Century.”
• “The greatest danger which confronts our nation today is not political but religious, and the preservation of our free institutions does not depend upon our army and navy, but upon the emancipation of the human mind from ecclesiastical slavery. ...You can not have free schools, free speech and a free press where the mind is not free.”
(Five quotes by) Marilla Ricker 1840-1920
"We have witnessed in the notorious Jonestown disaster the tragedy that can occur from the blind following of a false myth. Yet that could be quite infinitesimal in comparison with a nuclear war which people's commitment to an Armageddon theology had let us into. It is not too much to say that Armageddon theology is a more serious threat to our human future than Soviet foreign policy."
Professor Lloyd Geering
"Only error needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself"
Thomas Jefferson
"I know of no book which has been a source of brutality and sadistic conduct, both public and private, that can compare with the Bible"
Reginald Paget 1908 -
Continued on 'HOLY QUOTES 2': http://www.webspawner.com/users/holy2quotes/
HOLY QUOTES 2
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