Interesting quotes on freethinking,deism,atheism and organsied religion.

karl 12
Posts: 3
Joined: 2008-12-12
User is offlineOffline
Interesting quotes on freethinking,deism,atheism and organsied religion.

Had a look around but couldn't find a quote thread.

Its been said that:

 "....the wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved in quotations"

Heres some interesting ones made by prominent freethinkers,deists and atheists down the ages (please feel free to add any) :

 

“The supreme arrogance of religious thinking: that a carbon-based bag of mostly water on a speck of iron-silicate dust around a boring dwarf star in a minor galaxy … would look up at the sky and declare, ‘It was all made just so that I could exist!’”
Physicist Peter Walker

 

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
Anais Nin
 

"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window".
Stephen King
 

"There is in every village a torch-the teacher:and an extinguisher-the clergyman" 

Victor Hugo

 

The Theologian is an owl, sitting on an old dead branch in the tree of human knowledge, and hooting the same old hoots that have been hooted for hundreds and thousands of years, but he has never given a hoot for progress.
Emmet F. Fields
 

Nature wants us to enjoy life to the full and die without giving it a second thought; Christianity wants the opposite.
Sainte-Beuve,Les Cahiers.


Most men would kill the truth if truth would kill their religion.
Lemuel K. Washburn.

 

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
Carl Sagan

 

"Religions are like farts.Yours is good but everyone else's stinks"
Picket fences
 

Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H.L. Mencken


"Religion is no more the parent of morality than an incubator is the mother of a chicken.”
Lemuel K. Washburn

 

"When the churches literally ruled society, the human drama encompassed: (a) slavery; (b) the cruel subjection of women;(c)the most savage forms of legal punishment; (d) the absurd belief that kings ruled by divine right; (e) the daily imposition of physical abuse; (f) cold heartlessness for the sufferings of the poor; as well as (g) assorted pogroms ('ethnic cleansing' wars) between rival religions, capital punishment for literally hundreds of offenses, and countless other daily imposed moral outrages. . . . It was the free-thinking, challenging work by people of conscience, who almost invariably had to defy the religious and political status quo of their times, that brought us out of such darkness."

Steve Allen
 


“The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.”
Thomas Payne
 

For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said "Think" The many have said "Believe!"-

Robert Ingersoll

 

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
Bertrand Russell
 

"The bible is a blueprint of in-group morality,complete with instructions for genocide,enslavement of out groups,and world domination.
But the bible is not evil by virtue of its objectives or even its glorification of murder,cruelty and rape.
Many ancient works do that-the Iliad, the Icelandic sagas, the tales of the ancient Syrians and the inscriptions of the ancient Mayans,for example.
But noone is selling the Iliad as a foundation for morality.
Therein lies the problem."
John Hartung

 

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.
Mark Twain
 


"The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive...but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born."
Mark Twain

 
 
"During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry."
Mark Twain

  
 
You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons,
sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky,
people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive
stories, and you say that WE are the ones that need help?
 Mark Twain
 


To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God.
Victor Hugo
 

 

The most powerful weapon against errors of any kind is reason.
Thomas Paine


Archeopteryx
Superfan
Archeopteryx's picture
Posts: 1037
Joined: 2007-09-09
User is offlineOffline
 Mark Twain might be one of

 

Mark Twain might be one of the most quoteable people in history.

 

Not THE most quoteable person, though. That award goes to Mitch Hedberg.

A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.


Brian37
atheistSuperfan
Brian37's picture
Posts: 16424
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is onlineOnline
These are merely people who

These are merely people who made a name for themselves. I have also read quotes from non-famous people, especially the posters on several skeptic sites, including this one, that deserve the same exposure as those above.

I would also encourage the readers of this post to quote your favorite quotes, even if they are from non-famous people.

 

 

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


Visual_Paradox
atheistRational VIP!Special Agent
Visual_Paradox's picture
Posts: 481
Joined: 2007-04-07
User is offlineOffline
"If we go back to the

"If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men."

— Paul-Henri, baron d'Holbach; The System of Nature

 

"The other world gives no motive for doing well to him who finds no motive for it here."

— Paul-Henri, baron d'Holbach; The Conscience of an Atheist
 


Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift
  I see the suns, I see the systems lift
Their forms; and even the systems and the suns
  Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

— Lucretius; De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
 

Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!


pauljohntheskeptic
atheistSilver Member
pauljohntheskeptic's picture
Posts: 2517
Joined: 2008-02-26
User is offlineOffline
 Read more, kill less!

 Read more, kill less! People need more knowledge. - Me

"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it?" - Robert A. Heinlein.

"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." - Carl Sagan

 

____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me

"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.


Archeopteryx
Superfan
Archeopteryx's picture
Posts: 1037
Joined: 2007-09-09
User is offlineOffline
There is a christianity joke in there somewhere....

 

Dr. McNinja: "I was the first McNinja to go to college. I was interested in how disciplines like forensics, anatomy, and chemistry could broaden my skill sets so that I could be a more efficient ninja."

Gordito: You wanted to be Batman.

Dr. McNinja: I wanted to be Batman. BUT ANYWAY. My school's science department attracted some strange students. Four of us found we had a shared interest in vigilantism, and we formed a sort of... club.

Gordito: A vigilante cl---

Dr. McNinja: A VIGILANTE CLUB!!! Comprised of:  Mary, code name: "Christina"! A girl whose life mission was to prove the existence of God. She could create magic spells, or "miracles" as she called them, to help others, and "prove the lord's love". But the spells were completely random, and every time left the possibility of serious doubt."

 

I was happy to see a stab at Christianity, albeit a mere glancing blow, in one of the greatest webcomics to ever hit the internets. At the risk of being a little spammy, I recommend that all nerds introduce themselves: http://www.drmcninja.com

 

A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.


Luminon
SuperfanTheist
Luminon's picture
Posts: 2455
Joined: 2008-02-17
User is offlineOffline
Archeopteryx wrote: Mark

Archeopteryx wrote:

 

Mark Twain might be one of the most quoteable people in history.

 

Not THE most quoteable person, though. That award goes to Mitch Hedberg.

I think that Terrence McKenna is one of the most quotable people. Well, in the kind of music I listen to, it's a good manner to put at least one his quote into the track, with a less or more electronically altered voice. That man really understood some things. Some of quotes I can stand for are for example:

“The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it's only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse. If you go to Bosnia or Somalia or Peru or much of the third-world then it appears that the apocalypse has already arrived.”

"Apparently there is a great discovery or insight which our culture is deliberately designed to supress, distort and ignore. That is that Nature is some kind of minded entity. That Nature is not simply the random flight of atoms through electromagnetic fields. Nature is not the empty, despiritualized lumpen matter that we inherit from modern physics. But it is instead a kind of intelligence, a kind of mind."

"If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on."

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.