"The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts."

"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them."

"The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'" Robert G. Ingersoll

"It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which [I] lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely personal,' from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings." (as quoted in Einstein, History, and Other Passions, p. 172)

"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the word uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence."

"Theologian: An uncommon individual who, though possessing finite abilities, has been called by God himself who, though possessing infinite abilities, requires the assistance of the former in explaining Himself to the rest of us." [Translation: if God existed, theologians would be out of work.]"

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom." Bertrand Russell

"Men have never fully used [their] powers to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing."

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; 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."

"[My] deep religiosity... found an abrupt ending at the age of twelve, through the reading of popular scientific books." (as quoted in Einstein, History, and Other Passions, p. 172)

"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." Isaac Asimov

"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God." Thomas Edison

"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."

"[The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."

"A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what he knows."

"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense." Chapman Cohen

"If death is the end of everything, then living is everything." Robert D. Richardson

"I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt." Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650)

"I've come to the conclusion that there can be little or no dialogue between 'proclaimers of truth' (religious and secular ideologues) and 'discoverers of truth' (empiricists). The former tend to debate, the latter tend to discuss." Edward H. Ashment

"Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel." Horace Walpole

"Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message."

"When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything."

"...nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called into question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages." (as quoted in Blind Watchers of the Sky, p. 101) Galileo Galilei

"I believe in the religion of reason -- the gospel of this world; in the development of the mind, in the accumulation of intellectual wealth, to the end that man may free himself from superstitious fear, to the end that he may take advantage of the forces of nature to feed and clothe the world."

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."

"I have seen several entirely sincere people who thought they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. That was the end of the search. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was seeking after political Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on the market. In any case, when he found the Truth he sought no further; but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors." (from What is Man?) Mark Twain

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

"Part of the power of Emerson's individualism is his insistence, at crucial moments, that individualism does not mean isolation or self-sufficiency. This is not a paradox, for it is only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising extent of his own dependence." Emerson: The Mind on Fire p. 88

"Just as science is more immediate and exciting than the history of science, so is insight more compelling than a history of insight." (p. 227)

"[Emerson] was interested not in the bookworm, not even in the thinker, only in Man Thinking." (p. 264)

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."

"I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing."

"When we traded the results of our fantasies, it seemed to us--and rightly--that we had proceeded by unwarranted associations, by shortcuts so extraordinary that, if anyone had accused us of really believing them, we would have been ashamed."

"All of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real." Umberto Eco

"Philosophy itself cannot but benefit from our disputes, for if our conceptions prove true, new achievements will be made; if false, their refutation will further confirm the original doctrines." (as quoted in Galileo at Work : His Scientific Biography, p. 108)

"I truly believe the book of philosophy to be that which stands perpetually open before our eyes, though since it is written in characters different from those of our alphabet it cannot be read by everyone."

"I believe in the religion of reason -- the gospel of this world; in the development of the mind, in the accumulation of intellectual wealth, to the end that man may free himself from superstitious fear, to the end that he may take advantage of the forces of nature to feed and clothe the world."

"All this [Paul's writing] is nothing better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told." Age of Reason Thomas Paine

"It may be that Emerson is going to hell, but of one thing I am certain; he will change the climate there, and emigration will set that way." (as quoted in Emerson: The Mind on Fire, p. 97) Edward Taylor (who inspired Melville's Father Mapple in Moby Dick)

To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to do this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it."

"It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark."

"Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German- American.' And proud of it." Michael Shermer

"I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true." "On the Value of Scepticism"

"I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them." The Quotable Bertrand Russell p. 138 &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the word uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence."

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom." Bertrand Russell

"Science has never sought to ally herself with civil power. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torment, least of all death, for the purpose of promoting her ideas." John W. Draper (1811-1882) U.S. chemist

"The biblical concepts of sin and salvation are an integral part of Christian doctrine. Christianity first creates a problem (sin) and then offers a "solution" (salvation). This is not unlike the protection racket; you either buy "protection"--or else!"

"Jesus' last words on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here." Donald Morgan

"Perhaps the greatest lesson [Huxley] learned from reading Carlyle was that real religion, that emotive feeling for Truth and Beauty, could flourish in the absence of an idolatrous theology." (from Huxley, p. 79)