Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 35

• They address an Eclipse every morning, whom they call their "Father."

  Emily Dickinson

  Morning, Father, Atheism

  Emily Dickinson, James Reeves (1959). “Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson”, p.10, Heinemann

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• When we think of his lone effort to live and its bleak reward, the mind turns to the myth "for His mercy endureth forever," with confiding revulsion.

  Emily Dickinson

  Thinking, Forever, Effort

  Emily Dickinson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)”, p.2349, Delphi Classics

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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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• By dipping us children in the Bible so often, they hoped, I think, to give our lives a serious tint, and to provide us with quaintly magnificent snatches of prayer to produce as charms while, say, being mugged for our cash or jewels.

  Annie Dillard

  Prayer, Children, Thinking

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.126, Canongate Books

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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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• Zealous groups threaten to infringe civil liberties when they seek government support to impose their own religious views on nonadherents. This has taken many forms, including attempts to introduce organized prayer in public schools, to outlaw birth control and abortion, and to use public tax revenues to finance religious schools.

  Norman Dorsen

  Religious, Prayer, Taken

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• We in the United States are pluralistic respecting ultimate beliefs. Profound values exist apart from a devotion to a god. Indeed, those who discriminate against nonbelievers flout the principle of religious tolerance that they often profess.

  Norman Dorsen

  Religious, Profound, Tolerance

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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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• Half the Christian churches of New York are trying to ruin the free public schools in order to replace them by religious dogma.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Christian, Religious, New York

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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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• Roman Catholicism: a hundred million people bowing down before a flesh-hating, elderly celibate.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Hate, Elderly, People

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