Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 22

• The state authorities have no place in the church of God, no right to control and persecute the conscience.

  Hans Denck

  Atheism, Church, Authority

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• Has it ever occurred to you how lucky you are to be alive? More than 99 percent of all the creatures that have ever lived have died without progeny, but not a single one of your ancestors falls into that group! ... Not a single one of your ancestors, all the way back to the bacteria, succumbed to predation before reproducing, or lost out in the competition for a mate.

  Daniel Dennett

  Fall, Competition, Atheism

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• But the United States is neither a Christian nation nor the exclusive home of any particular religious group. Non-Christians are not guests. We are as much hosts as any Mayflower-descendant Protestant. It is our home as well as theirs. And in a home with so many owners, there can be no official sectarian prayer. That is what the First Amendment is all about, and the first act by the new administration was in defiance of our Constitution.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Christian, Religious, Prayer

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• There can be no doubt ... of our dependence upon forces beyond our control. Primitive man was so impotent in the face of these forces that g , especially in an unfavorable natural environment, fear became a dominant attitude, and, as the old saying goes, fear created gods.

  John Dewey

  Attitude, Men, Primitive Man

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• There is nothing left worth preserving in the notions of unseen powers, controlling human destiny, to which obedience and worship are due.

  John Dewey

  Destiny, Atheism, Unseen

  John Dewey (1960). “A Common Faith”, p.7, Yale University Press

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• Religions have been universal in the sense that all the people we know anything about have had a religion. But the differences among them are so great and so shocking that any common element that can be extracted is meaningless.... The older apologists for Christianity seem to have been better advised than some modern ones in condemning every religion but one as an impostor, as at bottom some kind of demon worship or at any rate a superstitious figment.

  John Dewey

  Differences, People, Atheism

  John Dewey, Larry Hickman, Thomas M. Alexander (1998). “The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, education, democracy”, p.403, Indiana University Press

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• Sweet Skepticism of the Heart That knows and does not know And tosses like a Fleet of Balm Affronted by the snow.

  Emily Dickinson

  Sweet, Heart, Snow

  Emily Dickinson (1955). “Poems: including variant readings critically compared with all known manuscripts”, Belknap Press

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• At least to pray is left - is left Oh Jesus - in the Air - I know not which thy chamber is - I'm knocking everywhere.

  Emily Dickinson

  Jesus, Air, Atheism

  Emily Dickinson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)”, p.136, Delphi Classics

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• Gentleness and peacefulness regulate our proceedings; theirs are dictated by fury. We employ reason, they accumulate faggots. They preach nothing but love, and breathe nothing but blood. Their words are humane, but their hearts are cruel.

  Denis Diderot

  Heart, Blood, Atheism

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• Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert. Except for the garments, their deep religious trances might just as well be happening at a revival meeting or in the congregation of a fundamentalist TV preacher.... As we move further from the life of ignorance and superstition in which religion has its roots, we seem to need it more and more.... Why has religion become a force just when we'd have thought it would be losing ground to secularism?

  Phil Donahue

  Religious, Cousin, Moving

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• Nonbelievers are protected by the religion clauses of the Constitution not because secular humanism is a religion, which it is not, but because when the government acts on the basis of religion it discriminates against those who do not "believe" in the governmentally favored manner.

  Norman Dorsen

  Believe, Government, Atheism

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• The Golden Age is the most implausible of all dreams. But for it men have given up their life and strength; for the sake of it prophets have died and been slain; without it the people will not live and cannot die.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Dream, Men, People

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• The Free Exercise Clause protects the individual from any coercive measure that encourages him toward one faith or creed, discourages him from another, or makes it prudent or desirable for him to select one and embrace it.

  William O. Douglas

  Exercise, Atheism, Prudent

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• Christianity has sufficient inner strength to survive and flourish on its own. It does not need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state support the greater it curtails human freedom.

  William O. Douglas

  Support, Inner Strength, Atheism

  "The Bible and the Schools". Book by William O. Douglas, 1966.

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• There is no superior person by constitutional standards. An applicant who is white is entitled to no advantage by reason of that fact, nor is he subject to any disability, no matter what his race or color. Whatever his race, an applicant has a constitutional right to have his application considered on its individual merits.

  William O. Douglas

  Race, Color, White

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• It isn't true that the laws of nature have been capriciously disturbed; that snakes have talked; that women have been turned into salt; that rods have brought water out of rocks.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Rocks, Law, Snakes

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Delphi Classics)”, p.4043, Delphi Classics

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• Dogmas of every kind put assertion in the place of reason and give rise to more contention, bitterness, and want of charity than any other influence in human affairs.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Giving, Atheism, Charity

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1986). “Letters to the press: the unknown Conan Doyle”, Harvill Secker

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• A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerant of contradiction; it must repudiate all improvement in itself, and view with disdain that arising from the progressive intellectual development of man.

  John William Draper

  Men, Views, Intellectual

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.6, New York, D. Appleton

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• How is it that the Church produced no geometer in her autocratic reign of twelve hundred years?

  John William Draper

  Years, Atheism, Church

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.307, New York, D. Appleton

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• In England Giordano Bruno had given lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity, the impostures, of his persecutors - that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor faith.

  John William Draper

  Country, Struggle, Fighting

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• All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Past, Atheism, World

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• The severest charge that can be brought against the Christian education of the Negro in the South during the last thirty years is the reckless way in which sap-headed young fellows, without ability, and, in some cases, without character, have been urged and pushed into the ministry.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Christian, Character, Years

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• The kind of sermon which is preached in most colored churches is not today attractive to even fairly intelligent men.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Intelligent, Men, Atheism

  W. E. B. Du Bois (1988). “Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887-1961”, p.84, Univ of Massachusetts Press

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• I can't believe it. Maybe there is a God after all. Herbal supplement sales only grew 1 percent last year. The years before, it was 17 percent, 12 percent, 18 percent.

  Dean Edell

  Believe, Years, Atheism

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• I think that Ingersoll had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed. Judging from the past, I cannot help thinking that the intention of the Supreme Intelligence that rules the world is to ultimately make such a type of man universal.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Past, Men, Thinking

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