Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 17

• The reader may ask himself if this is not cruelty and injustice of a kind so terrible that it beggars the imagination, and whether these poor people would not fare far better if they were entrusted to the devils in Hell than they do at the hands of the devils of the New World who masquerade as Christians.

  Bartolome de las Casas

  Christian, Hands, Imagination

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• I write ... in order to help ensure that the teeming millions in the New World, for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance, but rather are brought to knowledge of God and thereby saved.

  Bartolome de las Casas

  Writing, Ignorance, Order

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• Religion claims to be in possession of an absolute truth; but its history is a history of errors and heresies. It gives us the promise and prospect of a transcendent world - far beyond the limits of our human experience - and it remains human, all too human.

  Ernst Cassirer

  Errors, Giving, Promise

  Ernst Cassirer (2006). “An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture”

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• Judging from the tendency and effect of his arguments, an atheist does not appear positively to refuse that a God may be... His verdict on the doctrine of God is only that it is not proven. It is not that it is disproven. He is but an atheist. He is not an anti-theist.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Atheist, Judging, Atheism

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• I've been an agnostic for as long as I can remember ... so I don't know where we go. But if it turns out that the lights are just turned off and nothing happens, well, that's okay.

  John Chancellor

  Light, Long, Atheism

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• When he said we were trying to make a fool of him, I could only murmur that the Creator had beat us to it.

  Ilka Chase

  Atheism, Trying, Fool

  Ilka Chase (1945). “Past Imperfect”, Pocket Books of Canada

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• The Universe is the most extraordinary masterpiece ever constructed by nobody.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Atheism, Masterpiece, Extraordinary

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• Even if nothing worse than wasted mental effort could be laid to the charge of theology, that alone ought to be sufficient to banish it from the earth, as one of the worst enemies of mankind.

  Lydia M. Child

  Worst Enemy, Effort, Atheism

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• If men do their best endeavours to free themselves from all errors, and yet fail of it through human frailty, so well I am persuaded of the goodness of God, that if in me alone should meet a confluence of all such errors of all the Protestants in the world that were thus qualified, I should not be so much afraid of them all, as I should be to ask pardon for them.

  William Chillingworth

  Men, Errors, Atheism

  William Chillingworth (1820). “The works of William Chillingworth, 1: in three volumes”, p.111

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• In a discussion of this kind our interest should be centered not on the weight of the authority but on the weight of the argument. Indeed the authority of those who set out to teach is often an impediment to those who wish to learn. They cease to use their own judgment and regard as gospel whatever is put forward by their chosen teacher.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Teacher, Wish, Atheism

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• Nature ordains that a man should wish the good of every man, whoever he may be, for this very reason that he is a man.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Wish, Atheism

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• To reduce man to the duties of his own city, and to disengage him from duties to the members of other cities, is to break the universal society of the human race.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Race, Cities

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• My mission is to see things as they are. Exactly contrary of a mission.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Atheism, Missions, Contrary

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• "The Holy Ghost," Luther instructs us, "is not a skeptic." Not everyone can be, and that is really too bad.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Atheism, Ghost, Holy

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• It cannot be doubted that theistic belief is a comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful loss. It cannot be doubted, at least, by many of us in this generation, who either profess it now, or received it in our childhood and have parted from it since with such searching trouble as only cradle-faiths can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead.

  William Kingdon Clifford

  Loneliness, Spring, Loss

  William Kingdon Clifford (1999). “The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays”, Pyr Books

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• Thought is powerless, except it make something outside of itself: the thought which conquers the world is not contemplative but active.

  William Kingdon Clifford

  Conquer The World, Atheism, Contemplative

  William Kingdon Clifford, Leslie Stephen, Frederick Pollock (2011). “Lectures and Essays”, p.10, Cambridge University Press

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• We don't need a constitutional amendment for kids to pray.

  William J. Clinton

  Kids, Atheism, Needs

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• I took the repeal of the Corn Laws as light amusement compared with the difficult task of inducing the priests of all denominations to agree to suffer the people to be educated.

  Richard Cobden

  Light, Law, People

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• The defenders of godism are now shrieking against the growing number of Atheists, and there is a call to the religious world to enter upon a crusade against Atheism. The stage in which heresy meant little more than all exchange of one god for another has passed. It has become a case of acceptance or rejection of the idea of God, and the growth is with those who reject.

  Chapman Cohen

  Religious, Atheist, Acceptance

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• Atheism, the absence of belief in gods, is a comparatively late phenomenon in history.

  Chapman Cohen

  Atheism, Belief, Absence

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• Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist. I repeat it. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Atheist, Heart, Men

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Nicholas Halmi (2002). “Opus Maximum”, p.236, Princeton University Press

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• Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it has ended in skepticism; and whenever religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to willful blindness and superstition.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Philosophy, Taken, Atheism

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• Clergymen who publish pious frauds in the interest of the church are the orthodox liars of God.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Liars, Atheism, Church

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• The annals of the French Revolution prove that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many.... The light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out the possessors as the victims rather than the illuminators of the multitude.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Light

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1867). “The Friend: a series of essays ... First American, from the second London edition”, p.214

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• We have a right to know or may lawfully know any truth. And a right to know any truth whatsoever implies a right to think freely.

  Anthony Collins

  Thinking, Atheism, May

  Anthony Collins (1713). “A discourse of free-thinking, occasion'd by the rise and growth of a sect call'd Free-thinkers. By Anthony Collins”, p.6

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