Quotes from Thomas Paine

Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.

The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Prophesying is lying professionally.

What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.

Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.

The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.

My own mind is my own church.

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

Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.

Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy creator, and thou wilt be safe; but if thou trustest to the book called the scriptures thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood.

The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.

And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man.

The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.

Yet this is trash that the Church imposes upon the world as the Word of God; this is the collection of lies and contradictions called the Holy Bible! This is the rubbish called Revealed Religion!

I detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel.

The Christian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder.

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.