The Rational Response Squad

In 2006 a member posted a thread on our message board to ask other atheists about favorite quotes that are anti-religious. The first post of this thread has been edited, to compile most of these atheist quotes in one place. Some of these quotes can be found at Celebatheists.com.

"Surely the ass who invented the first religion ought to be the first ass damned" - Mark Twain

"Faith is believing in that which I know ain't so." - Mark Twain

"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray."Robert Green Ingersoll

"Nothing could be more idiotic and absurd than the doctrine of the trinity."Robert Green Ingersoll

"Fear paints pictures of ghosts and hangs them in the gallery of ignorance."Robert Green Ingersoll

"Nothing could be more idiotic and absurd than the doctrine of the trinity."Robert Green Ingersoll

(paraphrase) - "If God objected to [people with various handicaps], he ought not have created such people."Robert G Ingersoll

"All thinking men are atheists." - Ernest Hemmingway

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Mohandas Gandhi

"Born again?! No, I'm not. Excuse me for getting it right the first time." - Dennis Miller

Annie Dillard: 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?"

"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke

"Without religion, we'd have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Stephen Weinburg

""Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. " Thomas Jefferson

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State." Thomas Jefferson

"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is." Thomas Jefferson

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter." Thomas Jefferson

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."- Friederich Nietzsche

"The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross." Friederich Nietzsche

"The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad." Friederich Nietzsche

"There is not enough love and kindness in the world to give any of it away to imaginary beings." - Friederich Nietzsche

"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan

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

"The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence." - Abu Ala Al-Maari

"Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night." - Isaac Asimov

"So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake. Religion is all bunk." - Thomas Alva Edison

"I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out." - Bertrand Russell

"I do not believe any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States." - Thomas Alva Edison

"Tell me there is a God in the serene heavens that will damn his children for the expression of an honest belief! More men have died in their sins, judged by your orthodox creeds, than there are leaves in all the forests in the wide world ten thousand times over. Tell me these men are in Hell; that these men are in torment; that these children are in eternal pain, and that they are to be punished forever and forever! I denounce this doctrine as the most infamous of lies." - Robert G. Ingersoll

"The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites." - Thomas Jefferson

"Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility." - H. L. Mencken

"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration--courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth."- H. L. Mencken

". Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain." - Gene Roddenberry

"If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced?" - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." - Voltaire

"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." - Frank Zappa

"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me." - Charles William Stubbs

"For there is nothing either good or bad, thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet, II.ii

"Faith: not wanting to know what is true." - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"The being we call god is merely a pawn working for a powerful and rational force in some far-off galaxy. This force is trying to weed out people who are irrational by seeing who would be stupid enough to believe in his god illusion so easily. Those that believe in this illusion, he will send to eternal damnation and he will deliver the rational beings, those who stoically refused to believe in a god, to heaven." - Nicholas Yee

"God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it." - Carl Sagan (1934-1996), Contact

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

"It's fair to say that the Bible cont
ains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza." --Penn Jillette

"I don't see any god up here" - Yuri Gagarin - first man in space, while in space.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.- John Lennon

"We need more understanding of human nature, becausethe only real danger that exists is man himself."- Carl Gustav Jung

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

If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall oneanother.- Epicurus

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

God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I?- Samuel Johnson

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.- Galileo

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.- Marquis De Sade

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.- Voltaire

God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature and it has been said often by philosophers, that nature is the will of God . And, I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see. - Frank Lloyd Wright

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me. - Robert Frost

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.- Eric Hoffer

If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circustance.- Theodore Dreiser

A country dominated by televangelism would be unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers, who envisioned religion as personal and spiritua, not social and political. No particular variety of religion was intended to control the political agenda, to set the community's moral tone or to judge who are the true believers and members of our society. But this is precisely the objective of the electric church- Razelle Frankel

My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own.- William Orville Douglas

England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.- Voltaire

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.- Laurence J. Peter

I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.- Oscar Wilde

If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?- Art Hoppe

"Since no one really knows anything about God,those who think they do are justtroublemakers."Rabia Al-Basri

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. - Socrates.

"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D." "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. ~ Douglas Adams,Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Moral: a peerless maxim enumerated by God in his Holy Bible, such as that of Deut. 23:1, if your testicles are crushed or your male member missing, you must never enter a sanctuary of the Lord. ~ Donald Morgan

There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said "Let us pray," and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible. ~Desmond M. Tutu, "Religious Human Rights and the Bible"

Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~ D. Dale Gulledge

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The world is not a prison house but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks. ~Edwin Arlington Robinson

The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings. ~Garrett Hardin

Sunday school: a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. ~H.L. Mencken

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,I. Asimov: A Memoir

"There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over." - Frank Zappa.

"How do I know the Bible isn't the word of God? Well if it was the word of God it would be clear and easy to understand...considering God was the creator of LANGUAGE!" - Bill Hicks.

""I'm proud to be an atheist - it helps me stand for so much more and fall for so much less." - Dan Barker

"All religions have been made by men." - Napoleon Bonaparte

"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?" - Mark Twain

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beutiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beutiful and his children smart." - H.L. Mencken

"One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up." - George Orwell

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei

"Atheism is a requirement for a complete human being. Religion is a crutch that is shackled to you, one you never really needed in the first place, but were convinced by others that you couldn't live without. Once you discover it's only an illusion, that it's not even a real crutch, you discard it gladly." -Brent Yaciw

"If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.--Edmond de Goncourt

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."--Huang Po

"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits."--Dan Barker, former evangelist

"Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, 'atheist' is a term that should not ever exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a 'non astrologer' o
r a 'non-alchemist'. We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. An atheist is simply a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87 percent of the population) claiming to 'never doubt the existence of God' should be obliged to present evidence for his existence-and, indeed, for his BENEVOLENCE, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day."--Sam Harris, "Letter to a Christian Nation"

"Religion is the opium of the masses." Karl Marx

Heaven will be a great place as long as you keep the christians out. - G. Janus

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" - Denis Diderot.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quietNapoleon Bonaparte

Hence today I believe I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty CreatorAdolph Hitler

I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job.George W. Bush

"Let's face it; God has an ego problem, why do we always have to worship him? "- Bill Maher

"I don't know anyone less Jesus like than Christians." - Bill Maher

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The Rational Response Squad