1. “George Bush says he speaks to god every day, and christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.” – Sam Harris
2. “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” -Stephen Roberts
3. “I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence” -Doug McLeod
4. “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
5. “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” -Richard Dawkins
6. “The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike” -Delos B. McKown
7. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.” – Albert Einstein
8. “Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.” -Chapman Cohen
9 “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
10. “Don’t pray in my school, and I won’t think in your church” – Unknown
11. “I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them” -Galileo Galilei
I can’t help but toss out one of my personal favorites:
“It AIN’T so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.” usually attributed to Mark Twain
Some good quotes there; not all from atheists. Galileo’s excommunication does not automatically qualify him for the title. Another of Einstein’s quotes: “With dice, God does not play.”
I believe in today’s world, Galileo would have been an atheist. He was as much of an atheist as he could have been given the cirumstances.
As for Einstein, here is a another quote of his “The idea of a personal god is quite alien to me and seems even naive”
While I don’t know enough about Galileo to know what his religious beliefs would be, I do know that his quote above would probably be agreed with by many religious people who also favor science. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it does seem sort of out of place on a list of atheist quotes.
Yes Randall, I do agree with you that this quote is a little out of place here. That last quote is there mainly because I like it rather than it’s merit as an atheist quote. I thought that putting it in at number 11 on a top 10 list would work, but I guess that was too subtle.
“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
That’s been my favorite quote for years. Kudos for having it on your list.
There are some great quotes on this list that are not used that often, so they need exposure.
Steven Weinberg’s one is a good universal quote. Sam Harris’ sarcastic quote is less general but still entertaining.
When we’re on the atheist tip, check out two-series discussion of The Four Horsemen (of rationalism and atheism) which includes Sam. It’s also on my Tumblr – check out the link above.
Cheers!
Shonzilla
Yes, Steven Weinberg’s is on of my favorites. It should be higher up on the list.
That looks like a good video….i’ll check it out when I have the time.
-cheers
Great list here. I’m going to print it off and put them on my bulletin board.
A very religious friend of mine gave me a copy of the Atheist’s Bible as a gift. It has a good number of Atheist quotes. It’s almost like a coffee table book about atheism.
I just went looking on amazon for that. Is this the one?
http://www.amazon.ca/Atheists-Bible-Illustrious-Collection-Irreverent/dp/0061349151/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1202310530&sr=8-1
Yup, that would be it.
Here are some great quotes.
OOPs.
http://secularearth.com/LinktoSecularEarth/tabid/72/Default.aspx
“a coffee table book about atheism”? I didn’t know that atheists have their own bible.
I fact not believing in God is believing that he doesn’t exist. It’s still some kind of believe
or some kind of religion..
Certainly!
Actions speak louder than words
Here it is.
I’m dumb
A buddy encoraged me to check out this page, brill post, fascinating read… keep up the nice work!
There are so many quotes by so many great people, however do you think that they ever lived up to thier own quotes.
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