Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 8

• 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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• Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.

  Ludwig Feuerbach

  Dream, Real, Simple

  Ludwig Feuerbach (2012). “The Essence of Christianity”, p.12, Courier Corporation

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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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• The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Government, Community, Political

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• ...What are numbers knit
  By force or custom? Man who man would be,
  Must rule the empire of himself; in it
  Must be supreme, establishing his throne
  On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
  Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Men, Numbers, Would Be

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1830). “The Beauties of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Consisting of Miscellaneous Selections from His Poetical Works, the Entire Poems of Adonais and Alastor, and a Revised Edition of Queen Mab ... With a Biographical Preface. Second Edition”, p.32

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• This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Education, Children, Learning

  Desiderius Erasmus (1986). “Literary and Educational Writings: Panegyricus and Philippum Austriaeducem. Moriae encomium. Dialogus Julius exclusus e coelis. Institutio principis christiani. Querela pacis”

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• There is a hearty Puritanism in the view of human nature which pervades the instrument of 1787. It is the work of men who believed in original sin, and were resolved to leave open for transgressors no door which they could possibly shut.

  James Bryce

  Men, Doors, Views

  "The American Commonwealth: Vol. 1: The National Government".

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• We have learned the answers, all the answers: it is the question that we do not know.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Atheism, Questions And Answers, Knows

  1928 'The Hamlet of A. MacLeish'.

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• When a culture feels that its end has come, it sends for a priest.

  Karl Kraus

  Religion, Atheism, Society

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• There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.

  Andre Breton

  Atheism, Liberty, Danger

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• The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Regret, Kids, Abortion

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.

  Umberto Eco

  Pain, Animal, Heaven

  Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.65, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

  Lord Acton

  Atheism, Sin, Liable

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• Any hope that America would finally grow up vanished with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism, with its born-again regression, its pink-and-gold concept of heaven, its literal-mindedness, its rambunctious good cheer... its anti-intellectualism... its puerile hymns... and its faith-healing... are made to order for King Kid America.

  Florence King

  Christian, Kings, Cheer

  Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.33, Macmillan

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• Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what Zeus will send you.

  Aristophanes

  Eye, Atheism, Mouths

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• As you know, God is generally on the side of the big squadrons against the small ones.

  Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy

  God, Atheism, Sides

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• In the crowd, herd, or gang, it is a mass-mind that operates-which is to say, a mind without subtlety, a mind without compassion, a mind, finally, uncivilized.

  Robert M. Lindner

  Compassion, Mind, Atheism

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• The only hope I can see for the future depends on a wiser and braver use of the reason, not a panic flight from it.

  F. L. Lucas

  Atheism, Use, Panic

  F. L. Lucas (2015). “The Search for Good Sense: Four Eighteenth-Century Characters: Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell and Goldsmith”, p.127, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• People make a lot of fuss about my kids having such supposedly 'strange names', but the fact is that no matter what first names I might have given them, it is the last name that is going to get them in trouble.

  Frank Zappa

  Funny, Humorous, Kids

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.247, Simon and Schuster

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• Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare.

  Anthony Burgess

  Rome, Cities, Atheism

  1963 Inside Mr Enderby, pt.2, ch.1.

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• The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.

  James G. Frazer

  Family, Mother, Men

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• Dear God, if you were alive, you know we'd kill you.

  Marilyn Manson

  Evil, Atheism, Alive

  Song: Godeatgod, Album: Holy Wood (In The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death), 2000

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• The whole LSD, STP, marijuana, heroin, hashish, prescription cough medicine crowd suffers from the "Watchtower" itch: you gotta be with us, man, or you're out, you're dead. This pitch is a continual and seeming MUST with those who use the stuff. It's no wonder they keep getting busted.

  Charles Bukowski

  Marijuana, Men, Medicine

  Charles Bukowski (2013). “Tales of Ordinary Madness”, p.205, City Lights Books

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