Quotes from Famous Freethinkers

[Thumper]

"You have confused a war on your religion with not always getting what you want." ~ Jon Stewart

 

[Thumper]

"A scientist reads dozens of book in his lifetime and still believes that he has a lot more to learn. A religious person barely reads parts of one book and thinks that they know it all." ~ anonymous

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” - Isaac Asimov

"We're not two sides of the same coin, and you don't get to put your unreason up on the same shelf with my reason. Your stuff has to go over there, on the shelf with Zeus and Thor and the Kraken, with the stuff that is not evidence-based, stuff that religious people never change their mind about, no matter what happens ... I'm open to anything for which there's evidence. Show me a god, and I will believe in him. If Jesus Christ comes down from the sky during the halftime show of this Sunday's Super Bowl and turns all the nachos into loaves and fishes, well, I'll think two things: First, how dare he interrupt Madonna! She is gonna be pissed! And two: Oh, look at that. I was wrong. There he is. My bad. Praise the Lord." - Bill Maher

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

[1] "Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind." - Dan Barker

[2] "Atheists are free to think what they want and decide the meaning and direction of their own lives. We don't answer to invisible beings whose existence cannot be proven." - Josh Mitchell

[3] "You talk about meaning and purpose, but what is this great purpose you imagine for yourself? To spend eternity slavishly praising a selfish and needy tyrant? What is the meaning or purpose of such a life to anybody else but that god?" - anon

[4] "I don't think we're here for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose' but I'm anticipating a good lunch." ~James Watson

 

[ChristineM]

Some Jim Morrison

I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.


If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

No one here gets out alive.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

"I'm not convinced that faith can move mountains, but I've seen what it can do to skyscrapers" - anon

 

[ChristineM]

If only closed minds came with closed mouths.
- anon.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

"When facts are what people want to be true, in spite of contrary evidence, witness the beginning of the end of an informed Democracy" - Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

[Revoltingest]

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good, and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring."

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people. Before you tell me how much you love your god, show me in how much you love all his children." ~ Cory Booker, Mayor, Newark, NJ

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

“In the melting pot called America, we are one nation under the Constitution …but not one nation under God. Given how the religious right opposes the teaching of evolution or any scientific and social view that conflicts with a literal interpretation of the Bible, we are really becoming one nation undereducated. And that is not an American value to be proud of.”

~ Herb Silverman

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion." ~ Bertrand Russell

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

“The object of Christ was to teach his followers how to die, rather than to instruct them how to live.... In Spain religion is cruel oppression, in Scotland it is a gloomy nightmare, in Rome it is priestly dominion, while in England it is simply emotional pastime. All these different phases of Christianity indicate that theological opinions depend on surrounding circumstances, and cannot therefore be the cause of the civilisation of the world.”

— Charles Watts in an essay titled Christianity, Its Nature and Influence on Civilisation 1868 Compiled by Bonnie Gutsch

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"There are no differences between the witch doctor and the priest, the spell casters, ministers, clergy and bone chunkers, they are those to whom power has been granted and whose pockets are lined, as they act as man's liaisons to the gods."
~ L J Lilly

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"No child of mine is going to suffer while some fat, sanctimonious preacher (with soft hands) takes my hard earned money for blowing hot air." DebJ's dad

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

~ John F. Kennedy speaking to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"If you're not religious but you hate gay people, then you're considered a homophobe, but if you are religious and you hate gay people then you're simply expressing your sincere faith and demand not to be condemned for it."

(Ian O'Doherty, Irish Independent)

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?

This is how I answer when I am asked — as I am surprisingly often — why I bother to get up in the mornings."

~ Richard Dawkins

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"The countries in the world that are the most fundamentalist and religious, and/or those whose identity is most religion-based, are the world's greatest troublemakers. Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Vatican City and the state of Israel come to mind".

(Frank Schaeffer, OpEd News)