“A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.” ——Martin Luther
“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.” ——Mark Twain
“If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they dwell in peace.” ——Voltaire
“When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?'” ——Quentin Crisp
“Christians are like frogs holding a symposium round a swamp, debating which of them is most sinful.” ——Celsus, on Christians in the second century A.D.
“I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said ‘Stop! don’t do it!’ ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ he said. I said, ‘Well, there’s so much to live for!’ He said, ‘Like what?’ I said, ‘Well…are you religious or atheist?’ He said, ‘Religious.’ I said, ‘Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?’ He said, ‘Christian.’ I said, ‘Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?’ He said, ‘Protestant.’ I said, ‘Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?’ He said, ‘Baptist!’ I said, ‘Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist church of god or Baptist church of the lord?’ He said, ‘Baptist church of god!’ I said, ‘Me too! Are you original Baptist church of god, or are you reformed Baptist church of god?’ He said, ‘Reformed Baptist church of god!’ I said, ‘Me too! Are you reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?’ He said, ‘Reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!’ I said, ‘Die, heretic scum,’ and pushed him off.” ——Emo Phillips
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction.” ——Blaise Pascal
“Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.” ——C. S. Lewis
“As editor of the largest newspaper in West Virginia, I scan hundreds of reports daily and I am amazed by the frequency with which religion causes people to kill each other. It is a nearly universal pattern, undercutting the common assumption that religion makes people kind and tolerant.” ——James Haught
“When religion is in the hands of the mere natural man, he is always the worse for it; it adds a bad heat to his own dark fire and helps to inflame his four elements of selfishness, envy, pride, and wrath. And hence it is that worse passions, or a worse degree of them are to be found in persons of great religious zeal than in others that made no pretenses to it.” ——William Law
“The Institutional Church (ecclesia) has killed only two kinds of people: Those who do not believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and those who do.” ——Will Durant
“I am perplexed at the stupidity of the ordinary religious being. In the most practical of all matters he will talk and speculate and try to feel, but he will not set himself to do.” ——George MacDonald
“If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.” ——Epicurus
“Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot subsist without right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward Him. Satan is a proof of this.” ——John Wesley
“The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooist brutality, is patently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with the dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.” ——John Adams
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” ——Jonathan Swift
“Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder’s than any other agency in the world.” ——Richard Le Gallienne
“The human race in the course of time has taken the liberty of softening and softening Christianity until at last we have contrived to make it exactly the opposite of what it is in the New Testament…” ——Soren Kierkegaard
“I think we must fully face the fact that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it makes him very much worse… Conversion may make of one who was, if no better, no worse than an animal, something like a devil.” ——C. S. Lewis, letter to Bede Griffiths, December 20, 1961
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” ——Anne Lamott
“True sweeping, incisive spiritual logic pours only confusion and dismay upon head and heart of all who set themselves up for pillars of the church without practising the first principles of the doctrine of Christ–men who, professing to gather their fellows together in the name of Christ, conduct the affairs of the church on the principles of hell–men so blind and dull and slow of heart, that they will never know what outer darkness means until it closes around them–men who seek gain first, safety next, and the will of God not at all–men whose presentation of Christianity is enough to drive the world to a preferable infidelity.” ——George MacDonald
“Many Christians still at bottom look upon God as one of the most selfish, self-absorbed Beings in the universe, far more selfish than they could think it right to be themselves, —intent only upon His own honor and glory, looking out continually that His own rights are never trampled on; and so absorbed in thoughts of Himself and of His own righteousness, as to have no love or pity to spare for the poor sinners who have offended Him.” ——Hannah Whitall Smith
“Men rarely (if ever) invent gods superior to themselves. Most gods have the morals and manners of a spoiled child.” ——Robert Heinlein
“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.” ——Richard Burton
“Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.” ——H. L. Mencken
“The mentality of fundamentalism is by no means an exclusive property of orthodoxy. Its attitudes are found in every branch of Christendom: the quest for negative status, the elevation of minor issues to a place of major importance, the use of social mores as a norm of virtue, the toleration of one’s own prejudice but not the prejudice of others, the confusion of the church with a denomination, and the avoidance of prophetic scrutiny by using the Word of God as an instrument of self-security but not self-criticism. The mentality of fundamentalism comes into being whenever a believer is unwilling to trace the effects of original sin in his own life. And where is the believer who is wholly delivered from this habit?” ——E. J. Carnell
“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.” ——Author Unknown
“Religious creeds encourage some of the craziest kinds of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and favor severe manifestations of neurosis, borderline personality states, and sometimes even psychosis.” ——Albert Ellis
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” ——H. L. Mencken
“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
“The majority of mankind think that they think; they acquiesce, and suppose that they argue; they flatter themselves that they are holding their own, when they have actually grown up to manhood, with scarcely a conviction that they can call their own. So it was, and so it ever shall be.” ——Bullinger
“Every other sect supposes itself in possession of the truth, and that those who differ are so far in the wrong. Like a man traveling in foggy weather they see those at a distance before them wrapped up in a fog, as well as those behind them, and also people in the fields on each side; but near them, all appears clear, though in truth they are as much in the fog as any of them.” ——Benjamin Franklin
“Oh these foolish men! They could not create so much as a worm, but they create gods by the dozens.” ——Michel de Montaigne
“All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.” ——Cathy Ladman
“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.” ——Robert Ingersoll
“Religion stinks of death.” ——Gary Amirault
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” ——Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.” ——Abraham Joshua Heschel
“Those who think all religions are the same look at the wrappings instead of the content.” ——Gene Edward Veith
“Things that will destroy man: Politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; worship without sacrifice.” ——Mohandas Gandhi
“In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America where it became an enterprise.” ——Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the United States Senate
“Any man or woman who neglects to maintain inward vigilance, and only makes an outward show of holiness in dress, speech, and behavior, is a wretched creature. For they watch the doings of other people and criticize their faults, imagining themselves to be something when in reality they are nothing. In this way they deceive themselves. Be careful to avoid this, and devote yourself inwardly to His likeness by humility, charity, and other spiritual virtues. In this way you will be truly converted to God.” ——Walter Hilton
“Those Christians who are very strict in their observances, think a good deal more of the Sabbath than of man, a great deal more of the Bible than of the truth, and ten times more of their creed than of the will of God. Of course, if they heard anyone utter such words as I have just written, they would say he was an atheist.” ——George MacDonald
“I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works… I mean real good works… not holy day keeping, sermon-hearing… or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.” ——Benjamin Franklin
“One chief cause of the amount of unbelief in the world is that those who have seen something of the glory of Christ set themselves to theorize concerning him rather than to obey him.” ——George MacDonald
“Christians, needless to say, utterly detest one another; they slander each other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse, and cannot come to any sort of agreement in their teaching. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own with deceitful nonsense.” ——Celsus, 178 AD
“In order to justify their behavior, they turn their theories into dogmas, their bylaws into First Principles, their political bosses into Gods and all those who disagree with them into incarnate devils. This idolatrous transformation of the relative into the Absolute and the all too human into the Divine, makes it possible for them to indulge their ugliest passions with a clear conscience and in the certainty that they are working for the Highest Good. And when the current beliefs come, in their turn, to look silly, a new set will be invented, so that the immemorial madness may continue to wear its customary mask of legality, idealism, and true religion.” ——Aldous Huxley
“The difference between heresy and prophecy is often one of sequence. Heresy often turns out to have been prophecy — when properly aged.” ——Hubert H. Humphrey
“A cult is a religion with no political power.” ——Tom Wolfe
“I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.” ——Napoleon Bonaparte
“In nothing do the words of Christian liturgy strike the ears of contemporary men and women as ’empty ritual’ so much as when they speak of a loving, Spirit-filled community where none is visible.” ——Leonel Mitchell
“I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.” ——Thomas Jefferson
“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.” ——Friedrich Nietzsche