Quotes from Famous Freethinkers

[Thumper]

“It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.” ~ Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

 

[Thumper]

"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 ... "Oh, look at that. I was wrong. There he is. My bad. Praise the Lord." ~ Bill Maher

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

― George Carlin

 

[ChristineM]

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
- Albert Einstein

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
- Albert Einstein

 

[Thumper]

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but illusion of knowledge.” ~ Stephen Hawking

 

[Thumper]

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text.

For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them." ~ Albert Einstein

 

[Thumper]

If you want to deny something, don't choose evolution or the Holocaust. You'll look silly. Way too much evidence. Choose a god or homeopathy. ~ Ricky Gervais

 

[Thumper]

"Why don't you pray just in case there is a god? ... For the same reason you don't cover your doorways in garlic in case there are vampires." ~ Ricky Gervais

 

[Thumper]

"Policymakers who deny basic scientific truths should also be denied penicillin, horseless carriages, and airtime on the magic box of shadows." ~ Josh Whedon

 

[Thumper]

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled." ~ Mark Twain

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

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

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

“In the beginning there was nothing. God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.”

~ Ellen DeGeneres

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

“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

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

- Phillip K. Dick

 

[Thumper]

If you don't like your religion's fundamentalists ... then maybe there's something wrong with your religion's fundamentals.

 

[Thumper]

"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

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"Reality is whatever is left over, after you loose all faith."

~ Bob the unbeliever

 

[Thumper]

“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem” ~ Captain Jack Sparrow

“Crazy people don't know they're crazy. I know I'm crazy, therefore I'm not crazy, isn't that crazy?” ~ Captain Jack Sparrow

 

[Thumper]

""There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers.

Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same.

Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is." ~ Stephen Fry

 

[Thumper]

"We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun." ~ Stephen Fry