Quote from Albert Einstein

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The Expanded Quotable Einstein (book)

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Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith.

—Thomas Jefferson
It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have. I merely give robust expression to views about the cosmos and morality with which you happen to disagree. You interpret that as ‘intolerance’ because of the weirdly privileged status of religion, which expects to get a free ride and not have to defend itself. If I wrote a book called The Socialist Delusion or The Monetarist Delusion, you would never use a word like intolerance. But The God Delusion sounds automatically intolerant. Why? What’s the difference? I have a (you might say fanatical) desire for people to use their own minds and make their own choices, based upon publicly available evidence. Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private ‘revelation’. There is a huge difference.

—Richard Dawkins
How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost?

—Dan Barker
It is misleading to bring (...) background metaphysical uncertainty into the foreground by speaking of probabilities. When we actually assert probabilities – "it will probably rain this week" – we base our claim on real-world observations. We might, for example, cite the observed frequency with which weather conditions like these produce rain. Probability assertions, in other words, are themselves based on evidence. They are not neurotically cautious moves to guard against outcomes which no observation gives us any reason to expect. We don't say: "we probably don't have tentacles". We just say that we don't. We don't feel some need to cover our ass in case we've been hallucinating all these decades. So it should be with God's existence. If we omit the "probably" from "we probably don't have tentacles", we should omit it from "there probably is no God".

—Michael Neumann (2009)
Happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion and love the only priest.

—Robert G. Ingersoll
Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source ... They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres.

—Albert Einstein
With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice... On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.

—Charles Darwin
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
The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is they are denying. This misuse give rise to absurd beliefs, assertions and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzche's famous statement, "God is dead".

—Eckhart Tolle
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

—Albert Einstein
Morality doesn't come from God, it comes from social convention and customs.

—Friedrich Nietzsche
Some humans have always noticed the improbability of god, the evil done in his name, the likelihood that he is man-made, and the availability of less harmful beliefs and explanations. We cannot know the names of all these men and women, because they have in all places been subject to ruthless suppression.

—Christopher Hitchens
The apparent multiplicity of Gods is bewildering at the first glance; but you presently discover that they are all the same one God in different aspects and functions and even sexes. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification.

—George Bernard Shaw
All religions, including Buddhism, stem from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created for our benefit, as a stage for our spiritual quests. In contrast, science tells us that we are incidental, accidental. Far from being the raison d'être of the universe, we appeared through sheer happenstance, and we could vanish in the same way. This is not a comforting viewpoint, but science, unlike religion, seeks truth regardless of how it makes us feel. Buddhism raises radical questions about our inner and outer reality, but it is finally not radical enough to accommodate science's disturbing perspective. The remaining question is whether any form of spirituality can.

—John Horgan (12/02/2003)
In spite of all the infidel philosophers who flocked around Voltaire in the first days of his illness, he gave signs of wishing to return to that God whom he had often blasphemed. He called long and loud for the priest; and his danger increasing, he wrote entreating the Abbe Gaultier to visit him; and afterwards he made a declaration, in which he, in fact, renounced infielity, signed by himself and two witnesses. D'Alembert, Diderot, and about twenty others, who had beset his apartment, he often cursed, and exclaimed, "Retire; it is you that have brought me to my presnt state. Begone; I could have done without you all, but you could not exist without me; and what a wretched glory you have procured me!" They could hear him, the prey of anguish and dread, alternately supplicating and blaspheming that God whom he had conspired against; and in plaintive accents would he cry out, "Oh Christ! Oh Jesus Christ!" and then complain that he was abandoned of God and man.
At one time he was discovered by his attendant with a book of prayers in his hand, endeavouring with a faltering tongue, to repeat some of the petitions for mercy addressed to that Being whose name he had blasphemed. He had fallen from his bed in convulsive agonies, and lay foaming with impotent despair on the floor, exclaiming, "Will not this God, Whom I have denied, save me too? Cannot infinite mercy extend to me?

—Norman Islay Macleod
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord..

—Adolf Hitler
What would you do if there were no God? Would you commit robbery, rape, and murder, or would you continue being a good and moral person? Either way the question is a debate stopper. If the answer is that you would soon turn to robbery, rape, or murder, then this is a moral indictment of your character, indicating you are not to be trusted because if, for any reason, you were to turn away from your belief in God, your true immoral nature would emerge. If the answer is that you would continue being good and moral, then apparently you can be good without God. QED.

—Michael Shermer
A lot can be said for the infinite mercies of God, but the smarts of a good pharmacist, when you get down to it, is worth more.

—Philip K. Dick
From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.

—Howard Dean
It's long been obvious that there is nothing substantively "new" about the so-called "New Atheism." If you ask any of the critics of New Atheism just what it is about it that they find new and objectionable, they can't point to anything that can't be found with atheists, skeptics, and critics of religion in earlier ages. It's only the attention and popularity of New Atheism which is truly new, and this is precisely what its critics find so objectionable.

—Austin Cline (15/07/2010)

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