When I die, I shall be content to vanish into nothingness… No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever I do… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One… — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Copy Share Image
There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is… — Giordano Bruno Copy Share Image
“When Church and State are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other; but where… — Isaac Backus Copy Share Image
I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory.… — Bertrand Russell Copy Share Image
An ideologue - one who thinks ideologically - can't lose. He can't lose because his answer, his interpretation and his attitude have… — James Burnham Copy Share Image
The fundamentalist believer is mostly a weird intellectual who often lacks real faith altogether. As a self-appointed attorney for God, who is… — Steve Allen Copy Share Image
...What are numbers knit By force or custom? Man who man would be, Must rule the empire of himself; in it Must… — Percy Bysshe Shelley Copy Share Image
That there is a continuous link from humans to gorillas, with the intermediate species merely long dead, is beyond the understanding of… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
So that, were it the purpose of God to produce comets as signs of his wrath it would be true to say… — Pierre Bayle Copy Share Image
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Science and Technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of… — Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr Copy Share Image
Humanism" is to be human, to think, to analyze, and to probe. To respond and to be stimulated by all living things… — Jacob Lawrence Copy Share Image
That the system of morals propounded in the New Testament contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some… — Henry Thomas Buckle Copy Share Image
Through inculcating the notion that sacrifice is a virtue, Christianity has succeeded in convincing many people that misery incurred through sacrifice is… — George H. Smith Copy Share Image
... All questions concerning the rise of Christianity are one: How was it done? How did a tiny and obscure messianic movement… — Rodney Stark Copy Share Image
Custom, law bent my first years to the religion of the happy Muslims. I see it too clearly: the care taken of… — Voltaire Copy Share Image
The coercive effect of this policy is particularly pronounced in the school setting given the age and impressionability of schoolchildren, and their… — Alfred Goodwin Copy Share Image
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… — Wendy Kaminer Copy Share Image
The Republicans hardly need a party and the cumbersome cadre of low-level officials that form one; they have a bankroll as large… — Barbara Ehrenreich Copy Share Image
Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
I think that Ingersoll had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed. Judging… — Thomas A. Edison Copy Share Image
Can theology give to the mind the ineffable boon of conceiving that which no man is in a capacity to comprehend? Can… — Baron d'Holbach Copy Share Image
Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure… — James Madison Copy Share Image
Theologians are all alike, of whatever religion or country they may be; their aim is always to wield despotic authority over men's… — Frederick The Great Copy Share Image
It can do truth no service to blind the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history,… — John Stuart Mill Copy Share Image
One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not… — Denis Diderot Copy Share Image
I feel as I always have, that the earth is the home and the only home of man, and I am convinced… — Clarence Darrow Copy Share Image
It's incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
One remarkable fact stands out in the history of witchcraft; and that is, its victims were chiefly women. Scarce one wizard to… — Elizabeth Cady Stanton Copy Share Image
Society bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities. If I say something offensive… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
Christianity ... that musty old theology, which already has its grave clothes on, and is about to be buried... A wall of… — Lucy Stone Copy Share Image
Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous… — Ilka Chase Copy Share Image
Bertrand Russell used a hypothetical teapot in orbit about Mars for the same didactic purpose. You have to be agnostic about the… — Richard Dawkins Copy Share Image
A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is… — Eric Hoffer Copy Share Image
The use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and should have only one aim,… — Karl Popper Copy Share Image
We have a hieroglyphical inscription in the British Museum as early as the reign of Sevechus of the eighth century before the… — Samuel Sharpe Copy Share Image
If I deny the existence of a God - if I deny the idea of a gold paved city with pearly walls… — Etta Semple Copy Share Image
Jefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted… — Edwin Gaustad Copy Share Image
Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science,… — Paul Kurtz Copy Share Image
