Secular Quotes

• Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . We need believing people.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Believe, School

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• Secular humanists suspect there is something more gloriously human about resisting the religious impulse; about accepting the cold truth, even if that truth is only that the universe is as indifferent to us as we are to it.

  Tom Flynn

  Religious, Cold, Truth Is

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• n our increasingly secular society, with so many disparate gods and different faiths, superhero films present a unique canvas upon which our shared hopes, dreams and apocalyptic nightmares can be projected and played out.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Dream, Unique, Secular Society

  "Superheroes movies like Avengers Assemble should not be scorned" by Tom Hiddleston, www.theguardian.com. April 19, 2012.

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• I'm not against religion in the sense that I feel I can't tolerate it, but I think written into the rubric of religion is the certainty of its own truth. And since there are 6,000 religions currently on the face of the earth, they can't all be right. And only the secular spirit can guarantee those freedoms and it's the secular spirit that they contest.

  Ian Mcewan

  Thinking, Earth, Rubrics

  Interview with Zadie Smith, www.believermag.com. August 2005.

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• Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

  James Madison

  Exercise, Secular Society, Law

  Virginia. General Assembly. House of Delegates, J. W. Randolph, James Madison (1850). “The Virginia Report of 1799-1800: Touching the Alien and Sedition Laws; Together with the Virginia Resolutions of December 21, 1798, Including the Debate and Proceedings Thereon in the House of Delegates of Virginia and Other Documents Illustrative of the Report and Resolutions”, p.136

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• History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Believe, Government

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.193, Cambridge University Press

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• I can't tell Black people to fight a war that is Israel's war. What kind of leader will you be, or should I be, to allow these babies Black, white and brown, to fight Israel's war, because Zionists dominate the government of the United States of America and her banking system.

  Louis Farrakhan

  Baby, Religious, War

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• As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

  John Adams

  Christian, Religious, Atheist

  "Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Signed at Tripoli". The Barbary Treaties 1786-1816, avalon.law.yale.edu. November 04, 1796.

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• A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

  Albert Einstein

  Sympathy, God, Death

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.39, Broadway Books

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• I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.

  Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

  Teaching, Knowledge, Men

  "Atatürk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey". Book by Andrew Mango, 1999.

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• All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

  Thomas Paine

  Inspirational, Christian, Atheist

  Thomas Paine (1821). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine”, p.2

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• Question with boldness even the existence of a god.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Atheist, Faith Religion

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.90, Rowman & Littlefield

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• If by 'intellectual' you mean people who are a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts and forming ideas for people in power, and telling people what they should believe...they're really more a kind of secular priesthood, whose task it is to uphold the doctrinal truths of the society. And the population SHOULD be anti-intellectual in that repect.

  Noam Chomsky

  Believe, Mean, Class

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• The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.

  Hannah Arendt

  Religious, Political, One Day

  "Crises of the Republic". Book by Hannah Arendt. Chapter: "Civil Disobedience", 1972.

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• To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

  Joseph Addison

  Religious, Religion, Facts

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• If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don't find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don't cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition.

  Brennan Manning

  Children, Law, Ideas

  Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.42, Multnomah

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• I believe in freedom, I'm for a world without borders. But that's an ideal. On a practical level, I'm for a secular state where religion only plays a minor role.

  Shahin Najafi

  Believe, Play, Borders

  "Rapper Najafi on the Fatwa: 'Fundamentalists Can't Take a Joke'". Interview with Georg Bonisch and Tobias Rapp, www.spiegel.de. May 28, 2012.

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• The war with Iraq ... had to be one of the greatest non sequiturs in military history. Attacked by a gang composed largely of Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia, the United States countered by invading an unrelated country, and one of the most secular in the Middle East at that.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Country, Military, War

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2008). “Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation”, Granta Books (UK)

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• This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

  John Adams

  Religious, Atheist, If There Is A God

  John Adams, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams”

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• Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Law, Presidential

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Reports of Cases Determined in the General Court of Virginia: From 1730, to 1740; and from 1768, to 1772”, p.140

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• Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Sad, Men, Ideas

  Henry Van Dyke (2015). “Little Rivers”, p.26, eKitap Projesi

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• Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.... During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

  James Madison

  Religious, Atheist, Ignorance

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• Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Faith, Religious, Atheist

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.383, Penguin

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• I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

  Richard Dawkins

  Death, Atheist, Learning

  "The Two Types of Faith" by Greg Cootsona, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 17, 2016.

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• I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

  Thomas Paine

  Atheist, Pain, Fear

  Thomas Paine (1819). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine”, p.4

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