Quotes on religion - For and against.

Many things have been said about this thing called religion. The following quotes are a mixture of old and not so old statements given by well-known as well as not so well-known people. The vast majority of the quotes are totally opposed, appalled, amused or bemused by religion. This is because there are far fewer things said by believers that are worth repeating. That is my opinion and since this is my hub, my opinion counts.

I have noticed that those noted for their intellectual power, wit and articulation tend to be atheists.

The others who defend or promote it...well...I'll let their words speak for themselves. If you are a believer, I hope you will allow yourself to read these words and maybe, just maybe, something will click inside your poisoned mind and you will be miraculously redeemed.

I won't hold my breath, though.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one - George Bernard Shaw

Faith means not wanting to know what is true. – Friedrich Nietzsche

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

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. – Mark Twain

The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country. - Rev. Jerry Falwell

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. – Friedrich Nietzsche

It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible. – George W. Foote

On the first day, man created God. – Anonymous

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

You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate. – Richard A. Weatherwax

The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.--Catholic Church's decision against Galileo Galilei

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. – Seneca the Younger

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

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence. – Doug McLeod

The world holds two classes of men – intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence. – Abu Ala Al-Ma'arri

The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. – Delos B. McKown

It is a just retribution for improper sexual misconduct --Mother Teresa, on AIDS

As far as I can tell from studying the scriptures, all you do in heaven is pretty much just sit around all day and praise the Lord. I don’t know about you, but I think that after the first, oh, I don’t know, 50,000,000 years of that I’d start to get a little bored. – Rick Reynolds

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish. – Anonymous

God should be executed for crimes against humanity. – Bryan Emmanuel Gutierrez

To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I wouldn’t be wrong to ask. – Geoff Mather

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. – Mark Twain

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 A Heinlein

"I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." – Douglas Adams

He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave. – William Drummond

Religion does three things quite effectively: Divides people, Controls people, Deludes people. – Mary Alice McKinney

When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life. – Sigmund Freud

Better a pink bottom than a black soul. -- Rev. Lester Roloff, defending his punitive child-control techniques. Roloff was jailed in 1973 and again in 1975 for child abuse.

Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains. – Robert G. Ingersoll

Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived. – Isaac Asimov

I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to hell if I’m ‘bad’. – Mike Fuhrman

Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions. – Frater Ravus

We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.--James Watt, Secretary of the Interior during the Regan years.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have. – Penn Jillette

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power but absolute power is corrupt only in the hands of the absolutely faithful. – Anonymous

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion. – Robert Pirsig

I wonder who got the shit job of scouring the planet for the 15000 species of butterfly or the 8800 species of ant they eventually took on board Noah’s Ark. But at least we got that magical rainbow for all their trouble. – Azura Skye

I have no need for religion, I have a conscience. – Anonymous

We're going to bring back God and the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public schools of America. --Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan addressing the anti-gay rally in Des Moines,

Man has always required an explanation for all of those things in the world he did not understand. If an explanation was not available, he created one. – Jim Crawford

The finality of death is the coldest truth one must face. Religion makes the perfect distraction. – Anonymous

Atheists will celebrate life, while you’re in church celebrating death. – Anonymous

Animals do not have gods, they are smarter than that. – Ronnie Snow

Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.--Jimmy Swaggart

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk. – Thomas Edison

I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not sceptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever. – Daniel Boorstin

Fundamentalism, of any type, due to its prerequisite lack of intelligent thought, could prove to be the worst weapon of mass destruction, of all. – David J. Constable

Today’s religion will be the future’s mythology. Both believed at one time by many; but proved wrong by the clever. – Steven Crocker

This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types.  - Judge Braswell Dean

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? – Douglas Adams

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. - Napoleon Bonaparte

I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it. - Edith Sitwell

Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many mistakes. - George Bernard Shaw

"If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you." - Anonymous

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. - Emo Philips

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.--George Herbert Walker Bush, Former U. S. President.

When we talk to God, we're praying. When God talks to us, we're schizophrenic. - Lily Tomlin

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

Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated - Andy Rooney

A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even if no one believes it. - Anonymous

Every religion in the world that has destroyed people is based on love. - Anton Lavey

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side - Aristotle

When you know the LORD you have no need for masturbation.--Brice Wellington

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life. - Aristotle

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion - Arthur C. Clark

How can anyone believe in a God whose servants abuse children and whose hierarchy protects the abuser? - Anonymous

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. - Bertrand Russell

Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free. -- Pat Buchanan

Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions - Blaise Pascal

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep-seated need to believe - Carl Sagan

By simple common sense I don't believe in God - Charlie Chaplin

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help? - Dan Barker

All thinking men are atheists - Ernest Hemingway

For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. - Gene Roddenberry

When the temptation to masturbate is strong, yell "Stop!" to those thoughts as loudly as you can in your mind. Then recite a portion of the Bible or sing a hymn.-- Mormon Guide to Self-Control

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost or never had the capacity for clear and realistic thought. - Henry Louis Mencken

Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions. - Jerry Falwell

Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. - Jesse Ventura

The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known. - John Stuart Mill.

The first requisite of the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.- Karl Marx

There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them. - Michael Moore

Faith is the unflagging determination to remain ignorant in the face of any and all evidence that you're ignorant. - Shaun Mason

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.- Sigmund Freud

The curse of Adam and Eve that fell upon the earth because of their sin will be lifted when Christ returns.- Tim LaHaye

Prayer has no place in the public schools, just like facts have no place in organized religion. - Superintendent Chalmers

Religion is against women's rights and women's freedom. In all societies women are oppressed by all religions. - Taslima Nasrin

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies. - Thomas Jefferson

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. - Thomas Jefferson

Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave and seeks to pursue us into eternity. - Thomas Paine

If there was no Bible, it would be no matter whether you could read or not. Reading other books would do you no good. - Jupiter Hammon

Don't pray in my school, and I won't think in your church. - Unknown

Theists think all gods but theirs are false. Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one. - Unknown

There is in every village a torch: the schoolteacher, and an extinguisher: the priest. - Victor Hugo

Atheism is the voice of a few intelligent people. - Voltaire

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

Men who believe absurdities will commit atrocities. - Voltaire

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense. - Voltaire

How do you choose between believing in Jesus, Bigfoot, leprechauns, witchcraft, Islam, alien abductions, the Tooth Fairy, gold at the end of the rainbow, or the myriad other assertions that people have made over the course of human history? - Wayne Adkins

I gave in, and admitted that God was God. -- C. S. Lewis

A letter to a U.K. newspaper says 'science provides an explanation of the mechanism of the December 2004 Asian tsunami but it cannot say why this occurred any more than religion can.' There, in one sentence, we have the religious mind displayed before us in all its absurdity. In what sense of the word 'why', does plate tectonics not provide the answer? Not only does science know why the tsunami happened, it can give precious hours of warning. If a small fraction of the tax breaks handed out to churches, mosques and synagogues had been diverted into an early warning system, tens of thousands of people, now dead, would have been moved to safety. Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.