In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind.
Counterfeit tolerance includes the opportunism of one who seeks, or accepts, tolerance for himself, as a minority, but who would deny it to others if ever he should be in a position to grant it.
Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas. . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.
An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.
Just because you're offended, doesn't mean you're right. Some people are offended by mixed marriage, gay people, atheism. So what? F*** 'em.
If I thought the Jews killed God, I'd worship the Jews.
The time has come to knock off this religion business in American politics. There's no end to the mischief that can occur. It is like putting nitroglycerine in a Waring blender.
The religious hypothesis, therefore, must be considered only as a particular method of accounting for the visible phenomena of the universe: but no just reasoner will ever presume to infer from it any single fact, and alter or add to the phenomena, in any single particular.
One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural.
Thomson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.
God - a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
When life is so harsh that a man loses all hope in himself, then he raises his eyes to a shining rock, worshipping it, just to find hope again, rather than looking to his own acts for hope and salvation. Yes, atheism IS a redemptive belief. It is theism that denies man's own redemptive nature.
I call him free who is led solely by reason.
I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril.
I could not without vile hypocrisy and a miserable truckling to the smile of the world. . . profess to join in worship which I wholly disapprove.
The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.
The place whereon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female fool.
If God is pleased in making you sick and unhappy, I hate God.
Atheism is not a matter of the mind; it is a matter of the heart.
Fear first created the gods.