Quotes About Belief

Montaigne: "Religion's surest foundation is the contempt for life.

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.

Dogma in power does have a unique chilling ingredient not exhibited by power, however ghastly, wielded for its own traditional sake.

the believer claims to know, not just that God exists, but that his most detailed wishes are not merely knowable but actually known. Since religion drew its first breath when the species lived in utter ignorance and considerable fear, I hope I may be forgiven for declining to believe that another human being can tell me what to do, in the most intimate details of my life and mind, and to further dictate these terms as if acting as proxy for a supernatural entity.

The drops (polio vaccine) were designed,said these believers. Their intention and effect was genocidal. Nobody was to swallow them, or administer them to infants. Within months, polio was back...

Those who say that I am being punished are saying that god can't think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.

You don't so much as become an atheist as find out that's what you are. There's no moment of conversion. You don't suddenly think 'I don't believe this anymore.' You essentially find you don't believe it.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or charted way of making a living at it. It is something you are, not something you do.

In the early days of the December that my father was to die, my younger brother brought me the news that I was a Jew. I was then a transplanted Englishman in America, married, with one son and, though unconsoled by any religion, a nonbelieving member of two Christian churches. On hearing the tidings, I was pleased to find that I was pleased.

There is, especially in the American media, a deep belief that insincerity is better than no sincerity at all.

Mass delusion is the only thing that keeps a people sane.

There either is a god or there is not; there is a 'design' or not.

And it seems possible, moving to the psychological arena, that people can be better off believing in something than in nothing, however untrue that something may be.

My challenge: Name an ethical statement or action, made or performed by a person of faith, that could not have been made or performed by a nonbeliever.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.

A consciousness of rectitude can be a terrible thing, and in those days I didn't just think that I was right: I thought that "we" (our group of International Socialists in particular) were being damn well proved right. If you have never yourself had the experience of feeling that you are yoked to the great steam engine of history, then allow me to inform you that the conviction is a very intoxicating one.

Si me convierto será porque es preferible que muera un creyente a que lo haga un ateo.

If one must have faith in order to believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished. The harder work of inquiry, proof, and demonstration is infinitely more rewarding and has confronted us with findings far more miraculous and transcendent than any theology.

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do.

The enduring rapture with magic and fable has always struck me as latently childish and somehow sexless (and thus also related to childlessness).

Unless a reincarnationist is willing to say there was a 'first generation' of souls created with the first humans, he is exposed to absurdity by the recency of human life on the planet.

If you have ever argued with a religious devotee, for example, you will have noticed that his self-esteem and pride are involved in the dispute and that you are asking him to give up something more than a point in argument.

Virtuous behavior by a believer is no proof at all of - indeed is not even an argument for - the truth of his belief.

But we do believe in religion—at least for other people. It is a means of marketing hope, and of instilling ethical precepts on the cheap.