Quote from Christopher Hitchens

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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

—Blaise Pascal
Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?

—Arthur C. Clarke
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
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
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
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
There are no Gods, no angels, no devils, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens the hearts and enslaves minds.

—Robert G. Ingersoll
Morality doesn't come from God, it comes from social convention and customs.

—Friedrich Nietzsche
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
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)
On what ground do you deem it necessary that God should single out certain individuals [by giving them prophecy], that he should set them up above other people, that he should appoint them to be the people's guides, and make people dependent upon them?

—Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi
War and killing will never cease,
and man on earth will not taste peace...
Until he learns that the prayers God hears, is the only weapon evil fears.

—Kate Buxbaum-Prado
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
From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.

—Howard Dean
Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

—George Carlin
The declaration which says God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.

—Thomas Paine
I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.

—Mahatma Gandhi
It is as yet undetermined what it means to be human, because every facet of our culture—and even our biology itself—remains open to innovation and insight. We do not know what we will be a thousand years from now—or indeed that we will be, given the lethal absurdity of many of our beliefs—but whatever changes await us, one thing seems unlikely to change: as long as experience endures, the difference between happiness and suffering will remain our paramount concern. We will therefore want to understand those processes —biochemical, behavioral, ethical, political, economic, and spiritual— that account for this difference. We do not yet have anything like a final understanding of such processes, but we know enough to rule out many false understandings. Indeed, we know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

—Sam Harris
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

—Marcus Aurelius

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