Quote from Blaise Pascal

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

—Mahatma Gandhi
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

—William Shakespeare
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

—Edmund Burke
The idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians. And of course it doesn't work all that well. The problem of Evil, capital letters and all, is the central enigma confronting theists. There is no solution. Isn't that obvious? All the holy texts and interpretations that contrive ways of getting around the problem read like the fine print in a fraudulent contract - and for the same reason: they are desperate attempts to conceal the implications of the double standard they have invented.

—Daniel C. Dennett (19/01/2010)
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

—Richard Dawkins
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

—General Douglas MacArthur
The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

—Mark Twain
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

—Dr. Lawrence Britt
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

—Alan Watts
If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.

—Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet)
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

—George Orwell
The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

—Arthur C. Clarke
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

—Dalai Lama
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
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.

—Steven Weinberg
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
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
The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military and other resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security...The United States may be able to defeat, even destroy, Al Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil.

—Army War College, report

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