Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 16

• Hypothesis is a toll which can cause trouble if not used properly. We must be ready to abandon our hypothesis as soon as it is shown to be inconsistent with the facts.

  William Ian Beardmore Beveridge

  Atheism, Tolls, Causes

  William Ian Beardmore Beveridge (1950). “The Art of Scientific Investigation”

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• There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Independent, Atheism, Pestilence

  Jeremy Bentham (1842). “The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Now First Collected: Under the Superintendence of His Executor, John Bowring ...”, p.70

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• By marriage the husband and wife are one person in law, that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage.

  William Blackstone

  Husband, Law, Wife

  Sir William Blackstone, Edward Christian, John Frederick Archbold, Joseph Chitty (1827). “Commentaries on the Laws of England”, p.343

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• The very act of sacrifice magnifies the one who sacrifices himself to the point where his sacrifice is much more costly to humanity than would have been the loss of those for whom he is sacrificing himself. But in his abnegation lies the secret of his grandeur.

  Andre Gide

  Lying, Loss, Sacrifice

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• Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Thinking, People, Evil

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• It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

  James Russell Lowell

  Song, Spring, Gun

  James Russell Lowell, Edward Everett Hale (1902). “Early prose writings of James Russell Lowell”

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• Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.

  George Santayana

  Life, Anxiety, Honor

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• Theology is an attempt to explain a subject by men who do not understand it. The intent is not to tell the truth but to satisfy the questioner.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Men, Atheism, Telling The Truth

  Harry Persons Taber, Elbert Hubbard (1904). “The Philistine”

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Believe it, my good friend, to love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in the world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues; and if I mistake not, you have as much of it as I ever met with in anybody.

  Anthony Collins

  Mistake, Believe, Good Friend

  Charles Bradlaugh, John Watts, Anthony Collins (2012). “Half-Hours with the Freethinkers”, p.69, The Floating Press

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• He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mean, Atheism, Knaves

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.181

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• The Americans who framed our Constitution felt that without freedom of religion no other freedom counted.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Atheism, Constitution, Framed

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• The heavens declare the glory of Kepler and Newton.

  Auguste Comte

  Heaven, Atheism, Kepler

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• To give oneself ernestly to securing righteousness and justice among the people, and while respecting the gods and demons, to keep aloof from them, that may be called wisdom.

  Confucius

  People, Giving, Justice

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• The Expulsion from Eden is an act of vindictive womanish spite; the Fall of Man, as recounted in the Bible, comes nearer to the Fall of God.

  Cyril Connolly

  Fall, Men, Eden

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• Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty. Belief or nonbelief was a matter of individual choice - a right underwritten in the basic charter of the nation's liberties.

  Norman Cousins

  Father, Individual Choice, Choices

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