Quotation

"If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you."
from a button

Quotation

"Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition"
Edward O. Wilson
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Quotation

"No matter how we see our own authentic selves, we can't compel other people to see the same way. We can try to explain what we're really like underneath, but we know it's futile. That fact itself shapes our sense of self."
Ophelia Benson
"What is Identity?"
Free Inquiry December 2015/January 2016

Quotation

"Thankfully, we're moving in a direction where some feel it's not an act of courage simply to state that you don't believe in god. . . . We must continue to speak out, be honest about our beliefs."
Pete Stark
acceptance speech for the 2010 "Emperor Has No Clothes Award"
from the Freedom From Religion Foundation

Quotation

"Psychological well-being is not determined by the presence of one type of emotion but by a diversity of emotions, both positive and negative."

June Gruber
"Sadness is always bad, Happiness is always good"
This Idea Must Die

Quotation

"Magic, it must be remembered, is an art which demands collaboration between the artist and his public."
The Myth of the Magus
E.M. Butler

Quotation

"Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth."
Ludwig Borne

Quotation

"The starting point is neither selfishness nor altruism but the state of being bound together. It's an illusion to believe that you can be happy when no one else is. Or that other people will not be affected by your unhappiness."
Tor Norretranders
"Altruism"
This Idea Must Die

Quotation

“All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but which is based on observed facts.”
August Comte
The Positive Philosophy

Quotation

"I know that a creed is the shell of a lie"
Amy Lowell
What's O'Clock

Quotation

"Just as evolution can create a multitude of species by expressing a common process in specific environments, so too can the mind create a multitude of mental species. You can no more count emotions or moral concerns than snowflakes or colors."

"Numbering Nature"
This Idea Must Die Kurt Gray

Quotation

“Keira Knightley: If only I wasn't an atheist, I could get away with anything. You'd just ask for forgiveness and then you'd be forgiven. It sounds much better than having to live with guilt.

David Cronenberg: Yeah, but you could always lie about being an atheist. I don't think an atheist could get elected in America right now.

Keira Knightley: No, I don't think they could either."

Interview Magazine, April 2012

Keira Knightley in an interview with David Cronenberg in

 

Quotation

"The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty." 
Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time

Quotation

"William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.' ... What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite." 
Bertrand Russell
Skeptical Essays

Quotation

"Supporters of separation of church and state are not vampires. They can tol­erate looking at a cross. But when that cross is displayed by government on public property using taxpayer funds, it sends a message: This is our com­­munity’s favorite religion. If you share this faith, then good for you. If you don’t, you’re a second-class citizen."
"The Cross’s Purpose: Government Must Focus On Secular, Not Sacred"
Church & State, April 2015

Quotation

"Creeds are not guide-boards; they are tombstones. On every creed can be read three words: 'here lies ___ and such lies!'"
Marilla M. Ricker
"Science Against Creed"
Women Without Superstition

Quotation

"Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb."
Richard Dawkins
The Selfish Gene

Quotation

"[P]rescientific people... could never guess the nature of physical reality beyond the tiny sphere attainable by unaided common sense. Nothing else ever worked, no exercise from myth, revelation, art, trance, or any other conceivable means; and notwithstanding the emotional satisfaction it gives, mysticism, the strongest prescientific probe in the unknown, has yielded zero."
Edward O. Wilson
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Quotation

"Every judgement teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty."
Frank Herbert
Dune

Quotation

"To say that this Timeless God began Time along with the Universe at a time when there was no Time implies that at that moment when He initiated this Unique Event He was engaged in a Time, or at a time in order to bring this Event about. He did something. What brought that Event about?"
Peter A. Angeles
The Problem of God: A Short Introduction