Agnosticism/Atheism Quotes

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What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

- Christopher Hitchens

Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.

- Thomas H. Huxley

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

- Christopher Hitchens

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble minds harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

- Albert Einstein

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

- Frank Lloyd Wright

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever -- this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

- Albert Einstein

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.

- Christopher Hitchens

We have a need for what I would call "the transcendent" or "the numinous" or even "the ecstatic," which comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn't trust anyone who didn't respond to things of that sort. But I think the cultural task is to separate those impulses and those needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.

- Christopher Hitchens

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

- Robert G. Ingersoll

He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).

- George Orwell

Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.

- Heywood Broun

Is god willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?

- Epicurus

I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.

- Quentin Crisp

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody -- not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms -- had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion.

- Christopher Hitchens

If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

- H. L. Mencken

True religion, like our founding principles, requires that the rights of the disbeliever be equally acknowledged with those of the believer.

- A. Powell Davies

No term of common discourse is so vague and elusive in meaning as the term "God."

- A. Eustace Haydon

I don't try to imagine a personal god; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.

- Albert Einstein

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.

- Marcus Aurelius

In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.

- Sam Harris

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

- Vincent van Gogh