- One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
- -Robert Henlin
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- -Arthur C. Clarke
- I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure—that is all that agnosticism means.
- -Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925
- To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
- -Isaac Asimov
- Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
- -Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary
- Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
- -Robert Henlin
- Men have ascribed to God imperfections that they would deplore in themselves.
- -W. Somerset Maugham
- To have a positive religion is not necessary. To be in harmony with yourself and the universe is what counts, and this is possible without positive and specific formulation in words.
- -Wolfgan von Goethe
- When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.
- -Emo Philips, stand-up comedian
- In the beginning there was nothing and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was still nothing but everybody could see it.
- -Dave Thomas
- A good sermon should be like a woman’s skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials.
- -Ronald Knox
- How wise are thy commandments, Lord. Each of them applies to somebody I know.
- -Samuel Levenson
- The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
- -G.K. Chesterton
- I don’t believe in atheists.
- -Neal Boortz
- I’ve never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith—it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
- - Robert Henlein(Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land)
- It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
- -Robert Henlein
- When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
- -Peter O’Toole
- Creationists make it sound as though a theory is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
- -Isaac Asimov
- I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
- -Thomas Paine
- So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
- -Bertrand Russell
- The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooist brutality, is patently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with the dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.
- -John Adams
- God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
- -William Godwin
- Science has done more for the development of Western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
- -Jeff Burroughs
- This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religions in it.
- -John Adams
- If the gods do evil then they are not gods.
- -Euripides
- Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.
- -James Fenimore Cooper
- The nearer to the church, the further from God.
- -John Heywood
- Every day people are straying away from the church and back to God.
- -Lenny Bruce
