Secular Quotes - Page 2

• Religion says earn your life. Secular society says create your life. Jesus says, 'My life for your life.

  Timothy Keller

  Life, Faith, Christian

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• . . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

  John Adams

  Religious, Father, Rights

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.293

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• The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

  Steven Weinberg

  Death, Spiritual, Religious

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• The Church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon. And I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Motivational, Death, Faith

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• It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, God, Religious

  Notes on the State of Virginia, query 17 (1781 - 1785)

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• Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

  Epicurus

  Atheist, Faith Religion, Omnipotence

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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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• 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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• 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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• Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Religious, Atheist, People

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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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• Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Religious, Atheist, If There Is A God

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.159, Library of Alexandria

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• The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature. . . . [In] the formation of the American governments . . . it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven. . . . These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

  John Adams

  Simple, Government, America

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• It was the schoolboy who said, ""Faith is believing what you know ain't so.""

  Mark Twain

  Faith, Atheist, Believe

  Following the Equator ch. 12, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)

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• The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Atheist, Government

  Notes on the State of Virginia, query 17 (1781 - 1785)

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• Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.

  James Madison

  Government, Atheism, Liberty

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Atheist, Prayer, Hands

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• Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

  Albert Einstein

  God, Religious, Atheist

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.328, Princeton University Press

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• The concept of neutrality can lead to a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it.

  Arthur Goldberg

  Religious, Neutrality, Constitution

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• It is unfair to label me anti-Islam. I am an atheist and a secular humanist.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Atheist, Islam, Labels

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• I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time [his grandchildren are] my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.

  Newt Gingrich

  Country, Atheist, Crazy

  "Newt talks faith at Texas church" by Kendra Marr, www.politico.com. March 27, 2011.

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• Where are the vehicles to character development in secular society?

  Dennis Prager

  Character, Secular Society, Development

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• In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith.

  John Taylor Gatto

  Teaching, Taken, School

  John Taylor Gatto, Thomas Moore (2013). “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling”, p.28, New Society Publishers

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• The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Life, Religious, Atheist

  George Bernard Shaw (1993). “The Complete Prefaces: 1914-1929”, Viking Adult

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