Quotes about atheism

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

— Francis Bacon

Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of man.

— Francis Bacon

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

— Francis Bacon

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

— Francis Bacon

I am a daylight atheist.

— Brendan F. Behan

We find the most terrible form of atheism, not in the militant and passionate struggle against the idea of God himself, but in the practical atheism of everyday living, in indifference and torpor. We often encounter these forms of atheism among those who are formally Christians.

— Nicolai A. Berdyaev

Irreligion. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.

— Ambrose Bierce

Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.

— Heywood Broun

Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place, (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close, and hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, cries out, Where is it?

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?

— Quentin Crisp

There are no atheists in foxholes.

— William T. Cummings

He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God.

— John Donne

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

Atheism is easy in fair weather.

— Ronald Dunn

An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame -- Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Here lies an Atheist: All Dressed Up and No Place to Go.

— Epitaph

If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism -- at least in the sense of this work -- is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

I can't believe in the God of my Fathers. If there is one Mind which understands all things, it will comprehend me in my unbelief. I don't know whose hand hung Hesperus in the sky, and fixed the Dog Star, and scattered the shining dust of Heaven, and fired the sun, and froze the darkness between the lonely worlds that spin in space.

— Gerald Kersh

If you don't believe in God, all you have to believe in is decency. Decency is very good. Better decent than indecent. But I don't think it's enough.

— Harold Macmillan

No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve.

— Hector Hugh Munro

He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).

— George Orwell

Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a go of it. We've only ourselves.

— John Osborne

What you don't understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.

— Boris Pasternak

If you can't believe in God, chances are your God is too small.

— James Phillips

There are few people so stubborn in their atheism who when danger is pressing in will not acknowledge the divine power.

— Plato

And as for the unbelievers, their works are as a mirage in a spacious plain which the man athirst supposes to be water, till when he comes to it, he finds it is nothing; there indeed he finds God, and He pays him his account in full; (and God is swift at the reckoning).

— Qur'an

The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.

— Jean Rostand

There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.

— Marquis De Sade

Now we have no God. We have had two: the old God that our fathers handed down to us, that we hated, and never liked; the new one that we made for ourselves, that we loved; but now he has flitted away from us, and we see what he was made of -- the shadow of our highest ideal, crowned and throned. Now we have no God.

— Olive Schreiner

I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.

— George Bernard Shaw

During the crusades all were religious mad, and now all are mad for want of it.

— Captain J. G. Stedman

First, whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbors, and where they separate, depend upon it, 'Tis for no other cause but quietness sake.

— Laurence Sterne

When ever a person talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not their reason, but their passions, which have got the better of their beliefs. A bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbors; and when they separate, depend on it that it is for the sake of peace and quiet.

— Laurence Sterne

An atheist is a man who believes himself an accident.

— Francis Thompson

How to trap an atheist: Serve him a fine meal, then ask him if he believes there is a cook.

— Source Unknown

An atheist is a person who has no invisible means of support

— Aldous Huxley

An atheist is a man who looks through a telescope and tries to explain all that he can't see.

— Source Unknown

We shall say without hesitation that the atheist who is moved by love is moved by the Spirit of God; an atheist who lives by love is saved by his faith in the God whose existence (under that name) he denies.

— Sir William Temple

Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead?

— John Updike

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

— Simone Weil

By night an atheist half believes in God.

— Edward Young

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

— Albert Einstein

Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.

— Isaac Asimov

You do not need the bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate.

— Richard A. Weatherwax

Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own?

— Bertrand Russell

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

— George Bernard Shaw

Faith means not wanting to know what is true.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

— Frank Lloyd Wright

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.

— Gene Roddenberry

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

— Seneca

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

— Isaac Asimov

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.

— Edward Abbey

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

— Steven Weinberg

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence.

— Doug McLeod

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

— Susan B. Anthony

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.

— Anonymous

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

— Francis Bacon

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

— Richard Dawkins

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.

— Steven H. Roberts

Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.

— Don Hirschberg

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

— Epicurus

People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)

— Douglas Adams

I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose

— Clarence Darrow

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk.

— Thomas A. Edison

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

— Douglas Adams

An atheist is as religious as a theist.

— Kedar Joshi

Under these conditions it is no wonder, that the movement of atheists, which declares religion to be just a deliberate illusion, invented by power-seeking priests, and which has for the pious belief in a higher Power nothing but words of mockery, eagerly makes use of progressive scientific knowledge and in a presumed unity with it, expands in an ever faster pace its disintegrating action on all nations of the earth and on all social levels. I do not need to explain in any more detail that after its victory not only all the most precious treasures of our culture would vanish, but – which is even worse – also any prospects at a better future.

— Max Planck