c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?" "You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.
— George Gordon Byron
I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work.Let God worry about your modesty I want to see your enthusiasm. 
— Robert Farrar Capon
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.
— Richard Francis Burton
Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.
— Bob Pierce
The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
— George Washington
But very quickly they all became grave again: for, as you know, there is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.
— C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
— Douglas Adams
The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. . . Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. . . Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.
— Pema Chödrön
It is not about doing what we feel like. It is about doing what God says.
— Joyce Meyer
Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
— Steven Weinberg
No it's not!" said Constable Visit. "Atheism is a denial of a god.""Therefore It Is A Religious Position," said Dorfl. "Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.
— Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
The Holy Land is everywhere
— Black Elk
It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them - and then they leap. I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for awhile. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
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 act against the liberty of his fellow men.
— Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Self-observation is the first step of inner unfolding.
— Amit Ray, Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.
— Joseph Campbell
A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.
— Mark Twain
If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.
— Napoléon Bonaparte
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?
— Joseph Heller, Catch 22
Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.
— Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.
— Philip Pullman
All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.
— Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things: de Rerum Natura
It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.
— Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
Christians are hard to tolerate I don’t know how Jesus does it 
— Bono
If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!
— Brian Cox
Most world religions denounced war as a barbaric waste of human life. We treasured the teachings of these religions so dearly that we frequently had to wage war in order to impose them on other people.
— Jon Stewart
Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
God's gifts put men's best dreams to shame.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.
— M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
— Aldous Huxley
I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
The purpose of all the major religious traditions is not to construct big temples on the outside, but to create temples of goodness and compassion inside, in our hearts.
— Dalai Lama XIV
I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so.
— Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov
Out of 100 men, one will read the Bible, the other 99 will read the Christian.
— Dwight L. Moody
There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.
— Richard Lederer, Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language
With a truly tragic delusion,” Carl Jung noted, “these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing.
— C.G. Jung
Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup -- of everyone's psychological makeup.
— Philip Pullman
Mephistopheles: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of GodAnd tasted the eternal joys of heaven,Am not tormented with ten thousand hellsIn being deprived of everlasting bliss?
— Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
— Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein: The Human Side
When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Reflection is the lamp of the heart. If it departs, the heart will have no light.
— ʻAbd Allāh ibn ʻAlawī al-Ḥaddād
Theology is ignorance with wings.
— Sam Harris
According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham.
— Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
All religions lead to the same God, and all deserve the same respect. Anyone who chooses a religion is also choosing a collective way for worshipping and sharing the mysteries. Nevertheless, that person is the only one responsible for his or her actions along the way and has no right to shift responsibility for any personal decisions on to that religion.
— Paulo Coelho, Like the Flowing River
A persons character is shown through their actions in life NOT where they sit on Sunday.
— Navonne Johns
Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place.
— Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Myth is what we call other people's religion.
— Joseph Campbell
He who has rejected his demons badgers us to death with his angels
— Henri Michaux
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
— Helen Keller, The Story of My Life
I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.
— John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.
— Dorothy Parker, The Algonquin Wits
Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.
— John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
If God is for us, who can be against us?
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
I want Jesus to come back and say 'THATS NOT WHAT I MEANT'" -
— Margaret Cho
You see, women have been essential to every great move of God. Yes, Moses led the Isaelites out of Egypt, but only after his mother risked her life to save him! Closer to our time, Clara Barton was instrumental in starting the Red Cross. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin put fire into people's heart to end slavery in the United States. Rosa Parks kicked the Civil Rights movement into gear with her quiet act of courage. Eunice Kennedy Shriver created the Special Olympics. Mother Teresa inspired the world by bringing love to countless thought unlovable. And millions of other women quietly change the world every day by bringing the love of God to those around them.
— Stasi Eldredge, Your Captivating Heart: Unveil the Beauty, Romance, and Adventure of a Woman's Soul
You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the state.
— Muhammad Ali Jinnah
I think it is very good when people suffer. To me that is like the kiss of Jesus. 
— Mother Teresa
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.
— Delos McKown
I knew then that I hadn't stopped believing in God. I'd just stopped believing God cared. There might be a God, Clary, and there might not, but I don't think it matters. Either way we're on our own.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
Anyone who says he knows God's intention is showing a lot of very human ego.
— Michael Crichton, Next
So no, I’m not too big on religion...and not very fond of politics or economics either...And why should I be? They are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three?
— William Paul Young, The Shack
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.
— Czesław Miłosz
I studied every page of this book, and I didn't find enough love to fill a salt shaker. God is not love in the Bible; God is vengeance, from Alpha to Omega.
— Ruth Hurmence Green
No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin—because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life.
— Gloria Steinem, The Vagina Monologues
‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎The mind of God is greater than all the minds of men, so let all men leave the gospel just as God has delivered it unto us.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Spurgeon's Sermons Vol. 1-10
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
I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.
— Flannery O'Connor
The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
In the bible it says you have to forgive seventy times seven. I want you all to know, I'm keeping a chart.
— Hillary Rodham Clinton
You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition.
— Carl Sagan
I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Eric in the foot instead of the head.
— Veronica Roth, Divergent
The Catholic novelist in the South will see many distorted images of Christ, but he will certainly feel that a distorted image of Christ is better than no image at all. I think he will feel a good deal more kinship with backwoods prophets and shouting fundamentalists than he will with those politer elements for whom the supernatural is an embarrassment and for whom religion has become a department of sociology or culture or personality development.
— Flannery O'Connor
Yoga is the art work of awareness on the canvas of body, mind, and soul.
— Amit Ray, Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style
The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are.
— Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen. 
— George Carlin
I think religion is a neurological disorder.
— Bill Maher
All the cunning of the devil is exercised in trying to tear us away from the word.
— Martin Luther
If there is no laughter, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship.
— Steve   Brown, Approaching God: Accepting the Invitation to Stand in the Presence of God
Religion is the opium of the poor
— Ernest Hemingway
It seemed there was always a close correlation between true believers and high body counts.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?
— Stephen Hawking
I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry.
— John Lennon
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. ...And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion.
— Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
I was born a heretic. I always distrusted people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.
— Susan B. Anthony
The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending and to have the two as close together as possible. 
— George Burns
I respect you as a person too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs.
— Johann Hari
This is the mythosphere. It's made up of all the stories, theories and beliefs, legends, myths and hopes, that are generated here on Earth. As you can see, it's constantly growing and moving as people invent new tales to tell or find new things to believe. The older strands move out to become these spirals, where things tend to become quite crude and dangerous. They've hardened off, you see.
— Diana Wynne Jones
If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.
— Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.
— Zig Ziglar
The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion mixes explosively with (and gives strong sanction to) both. Only the willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today. Without a doubt it is the prime aggravator of the Middle East. Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different now. ‘All is changed, changed utterly.
— Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
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....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
— Mark Twain
I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.	That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen...patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that 'all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin), but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused.
— C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
— Alan W. Watts
Morality is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion.
— Khushwant Singh
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
— Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions
We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all receivedwisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion....This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no needfor temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicatedphilosophy, doctrine or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple.The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights anddignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need.So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we arelearned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow someother religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others andconduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there isno doubt we will be happy.
— Dalai Lama XIV
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.")
— Voltaire
I'm sorry if any of you are catholic. I'm not sorry if you're offended, I'm actually just sorry by the fact that you're catholic
— Bill Hicks
I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true.... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque.
— Christopher Hitchens
The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.
— David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
the church should just stay out of people's pants.
— Alex   Sanchez, The God Box
I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
— Isaac Asimov
Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
I feel that we should stop wasting our time trying to please the supernatural and concentrate on improving the welfare of human beings. I think that, uh, we should use our energy and our initiative to solve our problems, and stop relying on prayer and wishful thinking. If we have faith in ourselves, we won't have to have faith in gods.
— Ruth Hurmence Green
I said to my children, 'I'm going to work and do everything that I can do to see that you get a good education. I don't ever want you to forget that there are millions of God's children who will not and cannot get a good education, and I don't want you feeling that you are better than they are. For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
— Ambrose Bierce
For the wages of sin is Death, but the gift of God is everlasting Life in Christ Jesus or LORD.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.
— Sam Harris
The Bible looks like it started out as a game of mad libs.
— Bill Maher
Pray to God, but row towards shore.
— Lee Ezell
In prehistoric times, early man was bowled over by natural events: rain, thunder, lightning, the violent shaking and moving of the ground, mountains spewing deathly hot lava, the glow of the moon, the burning heat of the sun, the twinkling of the stars. Our human brain searched for an answer, and the conclusion was that it all must be caused by something greater than ourselves - this, of course, sprouted the earliest seeds of religion. This theory is certainly reflected in faery lore. In the beautiful sloping hills of Connemara in Ireland, for example, faeries were believed to have been just as beautiful, peaceful, and pleasant as the world around them. But in the Scottish Highlands, with their dark, brooding mountains and eerie highland lakes, villagers warned of deadly water-kelpies and spirit characters that packed a bit more punch.
— Signe Pike, Faery Tale: One Woman's Search for Enchantment in a Modern World
How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
— Christopher Hitchens
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.]
— James Madison
Forgiveness is God's greatest gift
— Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening. These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.
— Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
…Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I don't know what will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. We're more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
— John Lennon
God not only loves the obedient - He enlightens them.
— Henry B. Eyring
We must remember that the test of our religious principles lies not just in what we say, not only in our prayers, not even in living blameless lives - but in what we do for others
— Harry Truman
Kindness has no religion. Religions are like narrow tracks but kindness is like an open sky.
— Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.
— Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion
Don't follow a defeated foe. Follow Christ. It is costly. You will be an exile in this age. But you will be free.
— John Piper, The Passion of Jesus Christ
The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
When asked why I don't believe in God I reply, quite simply, "vaginas".
— Robert Clark
Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science. Some educators representing, as they think, the conscience of science act much like those legislators who in 1925 prohibited by law the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. In that case, anti-evolutionists were fearful that a scientific idea would undermine religious belief. Today, pro-evolutionists are fearful that a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient confidence in religion; the latter insufficient confidence in science. The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.
— Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School
Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting--or even demanding--their own enslavement.
— Larken Rose
Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like.
— Christopher Hitchens
Nell did not imagine that Constable Moore wanted to get into a detailed discussion of recent events, so she changed the subject. "I think I have finally worked out what you were trying to tell me, years ago, about being intelligent," she said.The Constable brightened all at once. "Pleased to hear it."The Vickys have an elaborate code of morals and conduct. It grew out of the moral squalor of an earlier generation, just as the original Victorians were preceded by the Georgians and the Regency. The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code– but their children believe it for entirely different reasons."They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated to believe it."Yes. Some of them never challenge it– they grow up to be smallminded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel– as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw."Which path do you intend to take, Nell?" said the Constable, sounding very interested. "Conformity or rebellion?"Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded– they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.
— Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
The story of my family. . .changes with the teller.
— Jennifer Haigh, Faith
I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long.? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
[R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which was also on the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from its original source of energy. We did not know that micro-organisms were so powerful and lived in our digestive systems in order to enable us to live, as well as mounting lethal attacks on us as parasites. We did not know of our close kinship with other animals. We believed that sprites, imps, demons, and djinns were hovering in the air about us. We imagined that thunder and lightning were portentous. It has taken us a long time to shrug off this heavy coat of ignorance and fear, and every time we do there are self-interested forces who want to compel us to put it back on again.
— Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Be brave. Be free from philosophies, prophets and holy lies. Go deep into your feelings and explore the mystery of your body, mind and soul. You will find the truth.
— Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations
Sama juga kalau untuk contoh lelaki. Kalau baca Al - Quran hari-hari, tapi main bola nampak kepala lutut,tak cukup balik lagi.Atau kalau solat lima waktu sehari semalam tapi pegang tangan anak dara orang bukan mahram sesuka hati, tu belum cukup baik lagi.
— Hlovate, Versus
There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.
— Bart D. Ehrman, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
— William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
God rewards those who seek Him. Not those who seek doctrine of religion or systems or creeds. Many settle for these lesser passions, but the reward goes to those who settle for nothing less than Jesus himself. And what is the reward? What awaits those who seek Jesus? Nothing short of the heart of Jesus.
— Max Lucado, Just Like Jesus
Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos
What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent.
— C.S. Lewis
They have not forgotten the Mysteries,' she said, ‘they have found them too difficult. They want a God who will care for them, who will not demand that they struggle for enlightenment, but who will accept them just as they are, with all their sins, and take away their sins with repentance. It is not so, it will never be so, but perhaps it is the only way the unenlightened can bear to think of their Gods.'Lancelot smiled bitterly. ‘Perhaps a religion which demands that every man must work though lifetime after lifetime for his own salvation is too much for mankind. They want not to wait for God's justice but to see it now. And that is the lure which this new breed of priests has promised them.'Morgaine knew that he spoke truth, and bowed her head in anguish. ‘And since their view of a God is what shapes their reality, so it shall be–the Goddess was real while mankind still paid homage to her, and created her form for themselves. Now they will make for themselves the kind of God they think they want–the kind of God they deserve, perhaps.'Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became.
— Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
— Aldous Huxley
Religion's just a well-oiled profit-driven denial of the randomness of it all.
— Wally Lamb
I have church on Sunday.”“Of course you do.”“You’re welcome to come along.”“Thanks, but I’m allergic to incense.”“That’s a shame.”“It’s the bane of my existence.”- Beth and Jake
— Alexandra Adornetto, Halo
The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it.
— Rob Bell, Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality
Religion is for those who don't want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have already been there.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.-- Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy
— Mikhail Bakunin
There are few ways in which good people do more harm to those who take them seriously than to defend the gospel with arguments that won't hold water. Many of the difficulties encountered by young people going to college would be avoided if parents and teachers were more careful to distinguish between what they know to be true and what they think may be true. Impetuous youth, upon finding the authority it trusts crumbling, even on unimportant details, is apt to lump everything together and throw the baby out with the bath.
— Henry B. Eyring
I guess if I had to pick a spiritual figurehead to possess the deed to the entirety of Earth, I'd go with Buddha, but only because he wouldn't want it.
— Sarah Vowell, Unfamiliar Fishes
Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God.""That's what my grandmother used to say," said Brutha automatically."Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable lady.""She used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day," said Brutha."A most complete understanding of the nature of mankind,
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.
— Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
A belief is not true because it is useful
— Henri-Frédéric Amiel
You believe in God?" demanded Billy Karma."I believe in thirty-seven separate and distinct gods," answered Argyle proudly. "That puts me thirty-six ahead of you.""It makes you a pagan.""It makes you a man of limited vision," said Argyle.
— Mike Resnick, The Outpost
So what is the difference between someone who willfully indulges in sexual pleasures while ignoring the Bible on moral purity and someone who willfully indulges in the selfish pursuit of more and more material possessions while ignoring the Bible on caring for the poor? The difference is that one involves a social taboo in the church and the other involves the social norm in the church.
— David Platt, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
No idea is above scrutiny and no people are beneath dignity.
— Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue
AUM or Om is not related to any religion because Om was practiced before the birth of all the religions of the world.
— Amit Ray, Om Chanting & Meditation