c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Remember, how you live your Life is far more important than how much you earn. Life soon ends. What matters is whether you enjoyed Life and Lived meaningfully.
— RVM
The reason your life stays the same is because you think everyone else is the problem. Stop pointing fingers and placing blame on others. Your life can only change to the degree that you accept responsibility for it.
— Steve Maraboli
When the toughest of problems strike me, I just remind myself that God is on my side.
— RVM
To live peacefully just look up into the sky and watch how the clouds drift in total acceptance. Instantly, you shall find Peace.
— RVM
We choose to do things that make us Cry. We don't know Why? We blame the Sky. We do not Try. Oh My! What a way to Die!!!
— RVM
We are defined by what we do
— John Rhein
Until you won't step into the creepy road, you will never be able to tread a smooth path for yourself.
— Damini Aggarwal, Zindagi Rewind
Those who say – “I need Motivation” will never create Inspiration that will take them to their Destination.
— RVM
The light of our souls is never extinguished, it can never be, as the eternal one abides within each and every heart forever
— Mimi Novic, The Silence Between the Sighs
We are born into a world that is much bigger than ourselves, one that is both enormously frightening and enormously beautiful. Although we walk the path of our individual lives alone we are always surrounded by the love of those who came before and those who are currently with us. We are part of a continually expanding web of evolution in a world where energy is neither created nor destroyed and the spirits of all living beings share our struggles and joys – we only have to look beyond ourselves to see them.
— Katarina Claire England Ross
When I wake up, I look to God.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The beauty of being is the bliss of blessedness.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Think on success, you will work for success, than you will get success
— Aymen Tmar
If you keep focusing on what people have to say or will say about you, you will lose focus of what God has called you to do. Never let distractions bother you...if you do, you will only be giving your energy to an unworthy cause.
— Kemi Sogunle
The respect you show to others (or lack thereof) is an immediate reflection on your self respect.
— alex elle
Relax, Recharge and Reflect. Sometimes it’s OK to do nothing.
— Izey Victoria Odiase
Seek pleasure in work itself as in result you have no control.
— Pravin Agarwal, 8 Course Meal For The Soul
Making many mistakesDoesn't make you a failureIt makes you become more successful
— K-Girl
To be happy, find out what is making you unhappy and change that. Reverse, RE-CHOICE and REJOICE!
— RVM
No, the safest thing is to become an island. To make your house a citadel against all the garbage and ugliness in the world. How else can you be sure of anything?
— Nickolas Butler, Shotgun Lovesongs
A man should construct meaningful ideas at his own will if he wants to take citizenship responsibilty by helping others pursue their happiness.
— Saaif Alam
The art of loving is not how many you touch, it is the heart of one that shows a masterpiece of your deepest design.~Bluenscottish
— Bluenscottish
Is it possible to choose your reaction to whatever happens? Yes, it is. Reaction is a CHOICE and we must consciously cultivate the habit of reacting Positively.
— RVM
Always cherish the gift of reading.
— Lisa McFarland, Henry Meets Capi the Lobster
Move on! Move on! Don't let anything Stop you. Go on and make your Dreams come true.
— RVM
The best-laid plans can fail for the lack of proper execution.
— Anurag Shourie, Half A Shadow
I spent all nightweaving a poem for you to wear. You look so beautifulwhen you wear my light.
— Kamand Kojouri
Survivors don't allow the word QUIT in their dictionary because they know the art of staying positive in any kind of negative situation.""BE A SURVIVOR
— Dipika Agarwal, The Better Side - 16 Positive Attributes To Lead A Better Life
Meditators dream of attaining the single-pointed focus that young children experience naturally when they play. Spiritual aspirants long for the rapture that defines moments of pure delight.
— Victor Shamas, The Way of Play: Reclaiming Divine Fun & Celebration
The source and essence of all creation can be found everywhere. It resides equally in you, in me, and in all things. True wisdom is the fullest understanding of this essence--an understanding that can happen only when there is no separation between the knower and the known.
— Victor Shamas, The Way of Play: Reclaiming Divine Fun & Celebration
Beautiful relations are based on bricks of trust, sometimes situations become unfriendly with no logical reasons behind it, some are eye-openers and some make you realize your faults , but if your intentions are right be bold enough to face all oppositions.
— Dipika Agarwal, The Better Side - 16 Positive Attributes To Lead A Better Life
Haters will unwittingly give you the inspiration you need to conquer your great obstacle of destiny if you did not give up
— Sunday Adelaja
Do all good things with sincerity, even if nobody appreciates, trust me every kindness are always appreciated by the Lord
— Elsa Gadia
Without toil, would there be any tears?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Life is not a puzzle to solve. Stop, Enjoy the Journey!
— RVM
Only your children’s grandchildren may remember our stories, but the stories are not what makes a life. It’s living with a smile and a free spirit that will ripple throughout the stars.
— T.S. Wieland
We cannot protect ourselves from disappointment and still live a fully engaged life.
— Sharon Weil, ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists, and Awakeners Navigate Change
If you want to succeed in life you have to blaze your own paths
— Candice Galek
This was the species whose main excuse for not doing something was 'if only I had more time'. Perfectly valid until you realised they did have more time. Not eternity, granted, but they had tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And the day after the day after tomorrow. In fact I would have to write 'the day after' thirty thousand times before a final 'tomorrow' in order to illustrate the amount of time on a humans hands.
— Matt Haig, The Humans
Feminism is not a one size fits all kinda thing but anyone can wear it.
— Jess
There is no aloneness. There is only unawareness.
— Lynne Cockrum-Murphy, Unfolding the Mystery of Self: We are Never Alone
Given that I don’t know anything, when I am making up stories about the future, why not make it a good story instead of a scary one?
— Sharon Weil, ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists, and Awakeners Navigate Change
When I act, I act on behalf of who or what I love. Even when I have to fight against something, it is because of what I value and love.
— Sharon Weil, ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists, and Awakeners Navigate Change
In Life, while you must achieve and you must do your best to achieve, don’t forget to enjoy Life because the Journey will be soon over.
— RVM
If you can't remember past history, don't worry;you are born to create a history for the future
— Samura
Passion is the fire that can burn through fear.
— Sharon Weil, ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists, and Awakeners Navigate Change
There is something to be said for rain, the sharing of an intimate caress with the leaves, blades of grass and all the living and the dead creatures to remind us we are connected.~Lyn Crain
— Lyn Crain, In My Shoes: My Poetic Journey from Abuse to Victory
Do you have a clear Direction of Life or are you merely floating down the river of Life like a dead fish?
— RVM
Be your own star..
— Siddhant R. Shinde
I'm like a bridge. I can crash and crumble, or stand and support people. I've done both.
— Brianna LaBrosse
We want books that make our hearts beat harder... that relieve us of the agonizing burden of everyday life
— Ben Oliveira
Reading is only a pretext for our bodies to stick together, like a sculpture, fused in a way that when trying to separate one from other, or the work remains intact or is completely lost
— Ben Oliveira
A distant goal can be achieved day by day.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Death was a lens that would reveal things as they really were: what was important would assume its true importance what was unimportant would recede into the shadows. 
— Robert Hellenga, The Sixteen Pleasures
A woman was counting her grams of gold in Sorrow while another, who had nothing, still counted her Blessings in Joy. Happiness is not what you HAVE, but how you FEEL.
— RVM
Even with all the Lace, you can't be an Ace without God's grace.
— RVM
Jealousy often turns people into irresponsible storytellers.
— Kevin Keenoo
You can't put a price tag on creativity
— Walt Disney Company
Believe that you can and you are halfway there
— Theodore Roosevelt
You will never know who you truly are until you can find a quiet place to sit and think. A place where you can get lost in hopes of finding yourself
— Callie
My friend Bailey is looking at me with tears in her eyes and a smile of pure joy. She sees me, the real me, not the broken little bird that my mother sees, or the Ambassador of Hope that my father sees, or the girl who was stupid enough to walk off with a stranger and ruin everyone's lives that my sister sees. Bailey sees me as I want to be: a normal, non-newsworthy, non-broken, non-victimized sixteen-year-old girl.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
What a paradox! People hate to be miserable but choose to be miserable. Remember this the next time misery arrives.
— RVM
My Keeper's house. Right there. Brown shingles, dark red shutters, yellow-and-black police tape wrapped around the massive tree trunks. The attic window looks out over the yard and the world narrows until that attic window is the only thing I can see.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
So many cameras are on me. This press conference is going to be on every news channel and posted on the internet. Thousands, maybe millions of people will see me. And they will all be thinking: Victim. Victim. Victim.
— Clara Kensie, Aftermath
Don’t ever let yourself surrender to writer’s block.
— Julie Wenzel, 500 Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Prompts
The resistance, though it comes in many forms, begins with the mistaken belief that I am somehow separate from change, and that I can control it, rather than to align myself with change as it makes itself apparent, and ride it.
— Sharon Weil, ChangeAbility: How Artists, Activists, and Awakeners Navigate Change
Every new day is the gift of a new divine grace.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Beauty is beauty.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Human being is human being.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
We were born free.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
New birth, new bliss.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
What is the Power that transcends one from Achievement to Fulfillment? The Power of Inspiration!
— RVM
Toutes les erreurs de la critique commises à mon égard, à mes débuts, furent qu'elle ne vit pas qu'il ne fallait rien définir, rien comprendre, rien limiter, rien préciser, parce que tout ce qui est sincèrement et docilement nouveau - comme le beau d'ailleurs, porte sa signification en soi-même. La désignation par un titre mis à mes dessins est quelquefois de trop, pour ainsi dire. Le titre n'y est justifié que lorsqu'il est vague, indéterminé, et visant même confusément à l'équivoque. Mes dessins inspirent et ne se définissent pas. Ils ne déterminent rien. Ils nous placent, ainsi que la musique, dans le monde ambigu de l'indéterminé. Ils sont une sorte de métaphore.
— Odilon Redon
Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?'Our father gripped the bannister. His hands were liverspotted and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Corrigan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost.'My own sons,' he said.We made a bed for him on a sofa in the living room, but even then Corrigan refused to stay under the same roof; he went walking in the direction of the city center and I wondered what alley he might be found in later that night, what fist he might walk into, whose bottle he might climb down inside.
— Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
Being poor in the Spirit means you are humble, gentle, meek, God-fearing,kind and exhibit the fruits of the Spirit but being Spiritually poor is lacking in every thing that pertains to life and godliness.
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu
When the Prince comes into your life, you will stop thinking and start reasoning.
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu
I see no priestly garments on you. There is no ephod on your belt. You presume to speak for Yahweh? You speak his name aloud so lightly?
— Cliff Graham, Day of War
The sky is blue everywhere.
— Kaleb Lampkin
In the human society, it is difficult to find all angels flapping there wings and all saints singing halleluya.
— late chief gani fahewinmi
Options abound in our world. You can choose where to stay and how to stay there. Where you are Today is as a result of the option you took yesterday and no doubt where you will be Tomorrow is embedded in your option Today. Choose right; choose wisely, Take THE BEST OPTION. The Best Option will deliver your inheritance to you. It will change your state and deliver to you, your brand new estate. You do not blame anyone for failing to do it right the first time. You accept the blame. The Best Option will cause you to get it right the first time and always.
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
— Albert Einstein
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
— Charles Bukowski
In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
Knock, And He'll open the doorVanish, And He'll make you shine like the sunFall, And He'll raise you to the heavensBecome nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...
— C.S. Lewis
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
— Abraham Lincoln
My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.
— Dalai Lama XIV
Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Religion is like a pair of shoes.....Find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear your shoes.
— George Carlin
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
— Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles à M. Claparede, Professeur de Théologie à Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de M. de Voltaire
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
— Edgar Allan Poe
People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. ... These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
— George Carlin
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
— Isaac Asimov
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
— Napoléon Bonaparte
To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?
— Christopher Hitchens
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried. 
— G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
I believe in good and evil," said Jem. "And I believe the soul is eternal. But I don't believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness."Tessa looked at will. "What about you? What do you believe?"Pulvis et umbra sumus," said Will, not looking at her as he spoke. "I believe we are dust and shadows. What else is there?
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.
— Emmett F. Fields
I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.
— Philip Pullman
If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!
— Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.
— Stephen Colbert
It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.
— Jon Stewart
I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
— Carl Sagan
This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.
— Dalai Lama XIV
In truth,there was only one christian and he died on the cross.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion.
— C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!
— Benjamin Franklin
Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.
— Frank Sinatra
There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously but to take it seriously one must be already mad. 
— Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4
I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.
— Johnny Cash
I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
— Isaac Asimov
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.
— Albert Einstein
Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.
— G.K. Chesterton
Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peaceYou may say that I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will be as one
— John Lennon, Imagine
Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.
— Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.
— Christopher Hitchens
I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate.
— George Carlin
There is no God and we are his prophets.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.
— Confucius
Music is my higher power
— Oliver James
What have I always believed?That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Only priests and fools are fearless and I've never been on the best of terms with God.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
I don't want to believe. I want to know.
— Carl Sagan
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays
Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.
— Albert Einstein
Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.
— Terry Pratchett, Jingo
God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
— Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies
Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
— Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.
— George Carlin
Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you—even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true.
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.
— C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
What has he found who has lost God?And what has he lost who has found God?
— Ibn 'Ata'illah al-Iskandari
I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat wearing Muslims.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.
— C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
— Émile Zola
Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I've discarded a belief in right and wrong." determines what is right!" right? I believe that my own morality -- which answers only to my heart -- is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
All religions are true but none are literal.
— Joseph Campbell
To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means.
— Brennan Manning
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
— John Paul II
Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.
— Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil.  (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
One's own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one's Maker and no one else's.
— Kahlil Gibran
Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.
— Richard Dawkins
My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.
— Frank Zappa
People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
I have a problem with people who take the Constitution loosely and the Bible literally.
— Bill Maher
Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse.
— Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.
— Edmond de Goncourt
Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life
Your way of life is sinful and wrong," he said fiercely.Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares, though they are the backbone of your church, and seeks to control his worshippers through guilt and fear.
— P.C. Cast, Betrayed
Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
— Denis Diderot
There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
— Frank Zappa
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.
— Carl Sagan
But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters.
— C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
[Saint Anthony] said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
— Richard Dawkins
The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.
— Robert Anton Wilson
Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
— Robert A. Heinlein
To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.
— Ray Bradbury, The October Country
Oh, Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!
— C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.
— Martin Luther
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. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.
— George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion
It doesn't matter that you didn't believe in us," said Mr. Ibis. "We believed in you.
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.
— Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there.
— Vine Deloria Jr.
To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
— Isaac Asimov
An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said.An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.
— Madalyn Murray O'Hair
There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.
— Stephen Hawking
Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.
— Isaac Newton
I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same fifty percent rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't...Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe...same as the voodoo lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles. It's all the same...so just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself...
— George Carlin
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
The thought manifests the word;The word manifests the deed;The deed develops into habit;And habit hardens into character;So watch the thought and its ways with care,And let them spring forth from loveBorn out of compassion for all beings.As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become.
— Juan Mascaró
Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.
— John Piper
Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?
— Frank Zappa
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think. 
— Arthur Schopenhauer
I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.
— Voltairine de Cleyre
One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.
— Arthur C. Clarke
Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since. 
— Abigail Adams
The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, that is true perversion!
— Harvey Milk
The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
— Jay Leno
There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.
— Ruth Hurmence Green
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
— Stephen Roberts
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
— Thomas Carlyle
On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.
— Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.
— Sam Harris
The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
— Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1832-1858
Professor Langdon,' called a young man with curly hair in the back row, 'if Masonry is not a secret society, not a corporation, and not a religion, then what is it?''Well, if you were to ask a Mason, he would offer the following definition: Masonry is a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.''Sounds to me like a euphemism for "freaky cult." ''Freaky, you say?''Hell yes!' the kid said, standing up. 'I heard what they do inside those secret buildings! Weird candlelight rituals with coffins, and nooses, and drinking wine out of skulls. Now that's freaky!'Langdon scanned the class. 'Does that sound freaky to anyone else?''Yes!' they all chimed in.Langdon feigned a sad sigh. 'Too bad. If that's too freaky for you, then I know you'll never want to join my cult.'Silence settled over the room. The student from the Women's Center looked uneasy. 'You're in a cult?'Langdon nodded and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. 'Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh.'The class looked horrified.Langdon shrugged. 'And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion.'The classroom remained silent.Langdon winked. 'Open your minds, my friends. We all fear what we do not understand.
— Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.
— C.S. Lewis, The Joyful Christian
Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!
— Douglas Adams
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
— Robert A. Heinlein
I don't pray because it doesn't work. Prayer doesn't fix anything. Bad things happen anyway.
— Nicholas Sparks, Three Weeks With My Brother
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
— Kahlil Gibran
In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
— Mark Twain
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.
— Richard Dawkins
Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.
— Jules Verne
The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural,Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible.
— Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose